All Possible Worlds
by tsutsuji
Summary: Sequel to Anything's Possible. A search for a cloning expert lands Bakura and Ryou in the midst of Transporters, Shinigami, and Getbackers, oh my! xover with Getbackers and Yami no Matsuei. yaoi hints and a little bad language.
1. Prologue

**All Possible Worlds - Prologue: In Which Bakura and Ryou Discover a House Is Not At Home **

Author: _Tsutsuji_

Fandom: Yugioh, with crossovers!

Crossovers: Prologue - Tenchi Muyo

Written in part for Crossovers100, Prompt: Home

Also written as part of NaNoWriMo, November 2007

Rating: PG13

Warnings: - a little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: _Yugioh!_ characters and Duel Monsters belong to Kazuki Takahashi and associates._GetBackers_ characters and settings belong to Yuya Aoki and Rando Ayamine and associates. _Descendants of Darkness_ characters and concepts belong to Yoko Matsushita and associates._Tenchi Muyo!_ characters belong to Hitoshi Okuda and various others. "Tsutsuji" is just a fangirl who is borrowing them all for the moment, and she makes absolutely no money from any of this silliness.

Notes: "All Possible Words" is a series of connected crossover stories that follows "Anything's Possible," a crossover with "Kim Possible" in which Bakura and Ryou got evil genius Dr. Drakken to make Bakura his own body. (Also, "Anything's Possible" is actually a sequel of sorts to "The Golden Dance," where Bakura and Ryou first discover and admit their mutual attraction to each other - if anyone's interested in following my B/R fanon continuity.)

**Prologue**

"The Greatest Scientific Genius in the Galaxy actually has a website too?" Bakura said, looking over Ryou's shoulder at the computer screen with a bemused smile. "Who'd've guessed? I told you, everyone has a website except you, _Yadonushi_!"

Ryou sighed. "Well, maybe I should make us one, then," he said wearily. "I'll just advertise the fact that you're a clone looking for a better-made new body that won't disintegrate in a couple of months, and then all the clone-makers in the world will beat a path to our doorstep, just for the chance to make a new you."

Bakura squeezed his arms around Ryou, and Ryou leaned his head back on Bakura's shoulder with another sigh.

"I'm sorry," Bakura said. "Don't get discouraged, we'll find a way. After 5000 years of not having a body of my own, and months of waiting to be with you, I'm not giving up being alive again! Besides," he chuckled, nuzzling Ryou's hair playfully, "it's too much fun to see all the girls at your school (and half of the guys) stumbling over themselves when they see us!"

"I don't like it," Ryou muttered darkly. "I hate it when other people look at you like that!"

Bakura laughed and squeezed him tighter. "I know. I love it that you hate it so much! It's just like I used to feel when people gawked at you and groped you. You're_mine_."

"Mmm," Ryou sighed, snuggling against him. "I am. And you're mine. And I'd feel that way even if Drakken hadn't made you so... "

"Hot? Sexy? Irresistible? "

"Cute!" Ryou said, squirming around suddenly to give Bakura a smack on the lips. "And all the rest, too. But you were all of that even when you were still just a spirit living inside my body, a voice in my mind..."

"A nightmare, taking over your body and your life," Bakura said quietly.

Ryou looked into the shadowy blue-gray eyes. It was odd, he supposed, that he didn't regret all the evil Bakura had done since Ryou had acquired the Millennium Ring and become his host, but he couldn't - not with the ancient Egyptian's arms warm and solid around him, and feeling the heart beating inside his chest as Ryou curled up and laid his cheek there. Bakura had protected him, too, and somehow along the way between nightmare and now, he'd fallen quite completely in love.

"I just wish Drakken really knew what he was doing when he made this body, though," Ryou said. "It seems so - alive. It's hard to believe something's going to go wrong with it in a few months. And I must say, it's a little hard to trust any more self-advertised geniuses after all that."

Bakura frowned. "I know. I feel perfectly fine, alive, and ordinary, even if I am a 5000 year-dead spirit inhabiting a poorly-made cloned body."

He and Ryou both looked toward the computer screen again. "Well, we do have a few other (equally insane-sounding) geniuses to check out," Bakura said. "Some of them are even right here in Japan, thank the gods," he added under his breath.

Ryou hid his smile; Bakura could face all the horrors of the Shadow Realm without a twitch, but he still hated to fly.

"That article you found in the science journal at the library, about the university that's doing cloning research, sounds like the best possibility to me," Bakura went on, scanning Ryou's list, "but I suppose this 'scientific genius' is exactly what you said you wanted when you started looking. Does it say how we can find this person?"

"Her site looks like it hasn't been updated much recently, but it says she's an expert in cloning, artificially created life forms, and inter-dimensional and interstellar travel..."

"Space travel?" Bakura growled. "I thought you said we didn't have to leave Japan!"

"We don't!" Ryou said, laughing. "See? The site says she's set up a laboratary near a shrine in the mountains - in fact, it's not far from Domino. Actually... " He frowned and trailed off, squinting at the screen. The more he read, the more strongly skepticism battled with hope.

Bakura leaned forward to read out loud over his shoulder. "_Currently residing at the Masaki Family shrine. Full research laboratory, containing several fully formed artificial environments and intra-dimensional lockways providing access to several distant planets of interest, with on-premises access by means of a particularly cleverly designed dimensional portal under the stairs in the family household near the Shrine."_

He sat back and folded his arms. "A gigantic research lab in a closet under the stairs, hm? My, my, that sounds... promising," he said dryly. "When do we leave?"

* * *

They found the shrine without too much trouble. It was well known by local residents of the district, but Ryou wasn't sure if the way eyebrows raised when they asked for directions was a good sign or not. 

He was even more uncertain what to think when they got to the place. It was a beautiful location, particularly on a fine autumn day with the surrounding hillsides all golden and red in the clear country air. It was just the kind of place that Ryou always felt drawn to, with its long stairway built into the hill as if it had grown there naturally, leading up to the shrine itself. The simple forms of the shrine buildings blended in with the forested hills, along with the ancient stones and great, old tree draped with _shimenawa_ marking the boundaries between the spirit world and ordinary life. Even before real magic had burst into his life, he'd always felt an enchanting sense of it in a place like this.

However, all of that was relatively ordinary in rural Japan. What made him and Bakura look at each other with raised eyebrows and mingled hope and frustration was the household of the family that was connected to the shrine - or rather, not connected to the shrine at the moment, due to the fact that the house itself was simply not there.

They stood at the gate and stared at the place where the house had obviously been, but was no longer. It must have been removed recently, Ryou thought, since the leaves were scattered thickly over the lawn around it, but only a few of them had drifted into the empty outline of the foundation.

Bakura raised his hand and reached out, as if touching something in the air. Ryou thought he could feel it too: the remains of some crackling energy that had barely begun to dissipate.

"Do you suppose one of the scientific genius' lab experiments went awry?" Bakura said, half-humorously. "Perhaps the 'cleverly designed' laboratory door malfunctioned and sucked the house off to another planet, or into another dimension? If that's the case, I hope she's a lot better at cloning than she is at making dimensional portals!"

"I wonder," Ryou said. His skin prickled lightly, hairs standing on end as if an electrical charge was drawing on them from above. He looked up. It was daylight, on a silky-bright autumn day, but he thought he could see stars glittering in an endless black sky. Bakura glanced at him and followed his gaze.

"What? Do you think they blasted off into space instead?"

Ryou shook his head, more to clear it than to disagree. "I don't know. Something strange happened, obviously, but even if it means this Washuu really _is_ a scientific genius, it doesn't do us much good, does it? There's obviously not anyone around."

"Well, it's certainly no wonder she hasn't updated her website in a while," Bakura said. "Looks like the professor has been a bit busy lately, at any rate!"

"Yes," Ryou answered vaguely. Busy with what, he wondered. And would she be back anytime soon? Somehow, although the house was gone and the shrine untended, the place didn't feel completely deserted. Maybe it was just too old and settled to feel that way, but he had a sense the whole place was just waiting placidly for its masters to return, as if they went on jaunts to other worlds on a regular basis.

Bakura seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "For all we know, this is a regular occurrence around here," he said. "That would explain the reactions we got when we asked for directions! Maybe Professor Washuu's house will fall out of the sky and bring her back sometime soon."

He sounded sarcastic, but Ryou could tell easily enough that he was hiding the same frustrated hope he felt in his own heart.

"Maybe. We can check back another time, I guess."

"Sure. Let's do that. In the meantime..." Bakura turned his back on the gate and the absent house. "Back to the list of possibilities? After all, if there's one dimension-traveling, clone-making scientific genius in Japan, there may well be others!"

"Yes," Ryou said with a sigh. "I suppose we could check out the others, while we're..." He trailed off. There was no point waiting around here in case the house happened to reappear.

Bakura gave him a wry smile when he pulled a neatly folded piece of paper out of his pocket.

"Plan B, then? The cloning research at that university in - where was it, anyway? I didn't notice."

Ryou glanced down the list, but quickly returned to the top.

"You never pay attention to the details," he said, which wasn't strictly true; it just depended on which details Bakura decided were relevant at the moment. "Shion University, in Kyoto. I've never been to Kyoto," he said thoughtfully. "It's supposed to be especially beautiful in the fall..."

_Continued in Part 1: In Which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing_


	2. Pt 1 Something for Nothing chapter 1

**All Possible Worlds, Part 1: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing (Chapter 1 of 8)  
**

Author: Tsutsuji

The first story in the "All Possible Worlds" crossover extravaganza series!

Fandom: Yugioh, plus!

Crossovers in Part 1: _GetBackers_ and _Yami no Matsuei (Descendants of Darkness)_

Crossovers100 Prompt: Teammates. Also written as part of NaNoWriMo 2007.

Rating: PG13

Warnings: - a little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer:_Yugioh!_ characters and Duel Monsters belong to Kazuki Takahashi and associates. _GetBackers_ characters and settings belong to Yuya Aoki and Rando Ayamine and associates. _Descendants of Darkness_ characters and concepts belong to Yoko Matsushita and associates. _Tenchi Muyo!_ characters belong to Hitoshi Okuda and various others. "Tsutsuji" is just a fangirl who is borrowing them all for the moment, and she makes absolutely no money from any of this silliness.

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 1**

A few days after their visit to the vanished Masaki house, Ryou found out that the tourist brochures weren't exaggerating: the old city of Kyoto was beautiful, even past the last fading days of autumn. An early snow had fallen, muting the late autumn colors and blending the lines between the old world and the newer parts of the city.

The snow was a whole new experience for Bakura, who only had known of it vaguely through Ryou's memories and sensations when they shared a body. He didn't like it.

"Damn, this shit is cold! How can people live in a place like this?" he said. He stood next to Ryou on a street corner at the edge of the oldest part of the city, with his arms wrapped around himself and shivering in a heavy, dark red coat. His hair stood up like ice-spears.

"In 5000 years you never experienced winter first-hand?" Ryou said, amused. "That's hard to imagine!"

"I never had such a well-traveled host before," Bakura retorted. "The Ring was never out of Egypt before your illustrious father bought it, you know."

"No, I didn't know, but I guess it makes sense now that you mention it."

Ryou cocked his head as they walked along the narrow streets, wondering vaguely as he did now and then just how Bakura's spirit had ended up trapped in the Millennium Ring so long ago. All he knew of Bakura's past life were the glimpses he had in the nightmares he shared with Bakura through their mental link, and what he could guess from the things Bakura had done when he first possessed Ryou, back when he was only obsessed with acquiring the Millennium Puzzle and the other five Items. They never spoke of Ancient Egypt or Bakura's life there.

However, Bakura no longer seemed interested in the Items, and the only remaining vestige of his former obsession was his continuing (and mutual) animosity toward Yugi's Other Self, who didn't even remember his own past life as Pharaoh. Ryou didn't care much about that, though. As far as he was concerned, all that mattered now was their future together, and that relied a great deal on Bakura retaining his own body.

He clasped his cold hands against his chest to warm them, but it was really to feel the solid familiarity of the Ring under his shirt. They had talked together a little about what might happen when the clone body made by Drakken began to break down, if Shego's message had been true and Drakken really didn't know what he was doing when he made it. They didn't even know if Bakura's spirit could return to the Ring or possess him again, if the new body did give out - and Ryou couldn't bear to think of the alternative. They had to find an answer before that happened.

"We should be able to see the university from around here," he said, turning from side to side. "The directions said it wasn't far from the old historic district..."

The line between the historic old town and the newer neighborhoods was marked by a wide area of new construction, all hidden behind flimsy wooden panels that lined the sidewalk for blocks. Ryou heard faint sounds of hammers and saws, muffled voices and the rumble of vehicles, but the only visible sign of what was going on behind the wooden barriers was a fifty foot tall crane that towered above one section they passed. Ryou wrinkled his nose; the cold air stunk of diesel fuel and tar, or something worse that he couldn't identify.

He was surprised and a little sad that there was so much new construction going on in the ancient town. If the circumstances had been different, he would have loved nothing better than to drag Bakura around to all the old temples, gardens, and shrines they could find. It seemed like a strange place to be hunting for a scientist engaged in cutting edge medical technology.

Bakura stumped along with his head down and muttered about the cold, unimpressed by either the jumble of historic buildings or the wonders of modern construction technology. Ryou craned his neck to see something that looked like the buildings of a major university. He assumed it was large enough that it would be easy to find, but all they eventually found was a school building that turned out to be no more than a high school.

"But it has the same name as the University," Ryou said, studying the sign near the gate. "It must be connected somehow. But where...?"

"Considering the situation," Bakura said through chattering teeth, "I am not above asking directions from schoolgirls."

"What do you mean? Oh!" Ryou caught sight of them then; there were three of them, all in identical coats, scarves, and skirts, huddled on the path a few yards away. All three stared at them with wide eyes while they whispered to each other. When they realized they'd been spotted, they stopped, blushed redder than Bakura's coat (or even Bakura's frozen nose), and their eyes got even bigger. Then the squeals and giggles broke out again in a rush.

"Not again," Ryou said wearily. "I wish they wouldn't look at you like that!" he muttered, but he followed Bakura toward them.

"It's only because the genetic material I'm made of came from you," Bakura said, wiggling his eyebrows at Ryou.

"No," Ryou said, giving an appreciative once-over to Bakura's broader-shouldered, slightly taller build. Even under the bulk of the coat, hunched over like an old man against the cold, the sight and closeness of him gave Ryou a very pleasantly warm flush through his whole body. "No, it is_not_ because of that at all. It may have been my DNA that Drakken used, but your spirit gave that body its form, and _that's_ why..."

That was why the trio of high school girls stared up at Bakura with awestruck gazes, as if he'd descended from the clouds in a golden glow of sensually-charged energy. One of them backed up a step, while the second one appeared to be frozen to the spot with her mouth hanging open. Miraculously, the third one managed to recover her wits and her manners enough to step forward with a refined little bow.

"May we help you?" she asked in a soft voice. The others twitched and blushed a little redder. Ryou realized - with a little bit of glee which he immediately felt ashamed for - that they were embarrassed to look so immature next to her more adult behavior.

"We hope so," Bakura said bluntly. Ryou winced. He didn't know if Egyptians had never had much for manners to begin with, or if it was just Bakura who so obviously lacked them; he strongly suspected it was the latter. "There's supposed to be a Shion University around here somewhere, isn't there?"

Ryou wouldnt have thought their eyes could stretch any wider, but they did, and the girl who had been frozen in place before now stepped back as if she'd been shocked. The polite girl faltered for a moment. He heard the two behind her whisper to each other behind their hands and nod, eyeing him and Bakura, but now they seemed rather more wary than excited. He didn't quite catch what they said at first, but a thrill ran through him when he caught one word: _clones!_ He realized what they must be thinking: _They look so much alike - could they be...? _

The polite girl recovered herself, but answered with pursed lips. She pointed back the way they'd come, along the street that was lined with blank wooden walls.

"You just passed it," she said stiffly.

"What's left of it!" the most frozen-looking girl whispered loudly to the other.

Bakura glanced back at the area and frowned.

"That doesn't sound promising," he said.

"But, wait," Ryou stammered, confused. "You mean it's all being remodeled, or...?"

The acrid, unpleasant air that he'd noticed a moment ago came back to him on the wind, and his heart sank into his cold feet when he recognized the smell for what it was - The smoke of burnt wood and melted plastic smoldering under freshly fallen snow. That wasn't new construction in the midst of old Kyoto after all.

"Oh, dear," he said. "There was a fire...?"

The girls nodded slowly.

"Is there anything left worth visiting?" Bakura asked bluntly. Ryou cringed, but the girls shrugged in a way that was not entirely a negative answer.

"There's nothing on the university campus, but everything they could save from the fire is here," the polite one said, waving her hand toward the grounds of the high school. "They suspended all university classes, of course, but the staff have taken over our school until they can sort everything out. They're even planning to start holding some classes again soon, in our classrooms."

One girl groaned at that but the other giggled. Ryou couldn't understand either reaction, until he tried to imagine a flock of college students swarming into the classrooms and hallways of Domino High School. It would be confusing and crowded, to say the least.

"I can show you where their new offices are, if you like," the same girl offered, while her friends made impatient noises behind her back indicating they had other, better plans.

"We don't want to be any trouble..." Ryou began, but Bakura stepped past him.

"Thank you, that would be perfect," he said, grinning down at her. For a moment, it seemed as if she'd frozen to the spot as well, except that Ryou was fairly certain her suddenly bright red cheeks had nothing to do with the cold air. She proved her relative maturity once again, however, and recovered herself with a little shake before Bakura had to nudge her back to awareness.

"This way," she said.

It must have been a tremendous fire indeed, Ryou reflected after they passed through the high school gates. The wooden panels along the boundary between high school and university grounds had been thrown up more casually than the ones hiding the wreckage from view on the street, so they caught slim but clear views of the ruins within. There was little to see but a blackened mass of broken timbers and bricks, still smoldering under the light coating of snow. There had been at least one large building in common for both campuses, and the fire had started to spread across to the high school as well; yellow tape was strung like a web around several buildings on this side of the makeshift fence, and even beyond the far side of the high school grounds where some family homes had been damaged as well.

He wondered how long ago the fire had been, and what had caused it, and how it could have spread so fast that the entire University campus was destroyed. It couldn't have been very long ago. Perhaps, he thought with a shudder, if they hadn't gone to search for the Masaki shrine first, they would have arrived in the midst of it. He also wondered where the science lab had been.

Their guide's two friends had hestitated, reluctant to give up their other plans (or perhaps more reluctant to spend any more time than necessary within sight and smell of the ruins), but had finally decided to follow them, and now Ryou could hear their hushed whispers behind him and Bakura as they trudged across the campus toward the main building. Other students and a few adults passed them, most of them huddled against the cold; several had scarves over their faces to keep out the cold and the smell, which grew stronger as they got closer to the ruins. Even so, almost every one of them looked up sharply as they passed, and Ryou knew without turning around that several people stopped and watched them after walked by. He glanced at the girls; all three of them stared straight ahead, obviously well aware of the stares but pointedly ignoring them.

As much as it bothered him when it involved goggling school girls, Ryou was actually quite used to Bakura getting lingering looks from strangers, and to getting double-takes when people saw the two of them together. He frowned; he really didn't think they looked _that_ much alike, but everyone else said they could almost be twins.

"How anyone could think that!" he often ranted at Bakura, who just laughed at the reactions they got. "You've got blue eyes and mine are brown; your hair is an entirely different shade of white and thicker than mine will ever be (no matter what I use on it), you're a good inch taller, ten solid pounds heavier and generally better built and..." he usually stopped about there. The other differences in size were things that other people didn't need to know about.

On this occasion, though, all the startled glances seemed more significant, coming from people at a school that was known for research on cloning. On the other hand, Ryou reminded himself as his heart speeded up, nobody had ever said they were cloning _humans_ here; in fact, that whole idea was rejected in the scientific journals he'd glanced through at Domino High School library. Nervous, imaginative school girls might pass around horrified gossip about human cloning, but nobody (except self-proclaimed evil geniuses and mad scientists who kept a few extra planets in the closet under the stairs) would ever condone such a thing officially.

So why did everyone here at Shion keep looking at him and Bakura so strangely?

_continued in Chapter 2_


	3. part 1 chapter 2

**All Possible Worlds, Part 1, Chapter 2**

Author: Tsutsuji

Rating: T

Warnings: - a little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)

Chapter summary: Bakura and Ryou dig deeper into the tragedies at Shion University, and find out they're not the only ones interested in the late Dr. Satomi's cloning research.

* * *

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 2**

A hand-written sign tacked up near the entrance directed all inquiries concerning Shion University to the main office within, and also listed classrooms as the meeting places for several departments and a few professors, as well as giving directions to the counselor's office. Neither the medical science lab nor Dr. Satomi's name were on the list. Bakura paused to stare at this, then turned to frown at the girls.

"What about the medical research department?" he asked suspiciously. "I thought that's what this school was famous for!"

"Well, yes, but," their guide said, twisting her hands together. "I think, from what I've heard anyway, that was where the fire started, at least that's what the rumors say. I guess there's nothing left of the building; they're not letting anyone in to that part of the campus at all. Anyway, there hasn't been any word of that department starting up again any time soon."

"What about Dr. Satomi, then - ?" Ryou began.

The girl gasped; her two friends who had been whispering and nudging each other behind her fell silent suddenly. One clasped her hand over her mouth while the other gripped her friend's arm. Bakura and Ryou exchanged a glance.

"You didn't hear?" their guide said. "Dr. Satomi is dead."

"_Shit_," Bakura swore under his breath. Ryou could have kicked him, even though he was just as depressed by this unwelcome bit of news as Bakura was, but the girls didn't seem surprised.

"I'm sorry to hear it," Ryou said, quite sincerely. He shuddered. "The fire?"

"No." The girl shook her head, twisting her hands together more tightly than before. "He died several days before the fire. The police say it was suicide."

Ryou gasped, even more disturbed by this unexpected tragedy. "Oh, dear! That's terrible!"

"Idiot," Bakura muttered, turning his head away dismissively.

"_'Kura_!" Ryou hissed.

Bakura scowled, but at least he ducked his head a little in a small show of remorse.

"Did you - did you know Professor Satomi?" the girl asked in a rush. Her eyes darted between the two of them anxiously. Ryou guessed she'd been building up curiousity about this ever since she'd first seen them.

He was desperate for information, and he couldn't see how they could get it now, assuming there was any information to be gotten from this place. Prodded by an increasigly uneasy sense of mystery around Dr. Satomi and the university fire, Ryou recklessly decided to lie. He just hoped Bakura would be able to hide his shock enough to go along with him.

"Yes," he said, "we did, although we've been out of touch for some time - obviously! We have, well, a personal interest in his research, you see." The second part was certainly true, anyway, and the girls' reaction to it was fairly predictable by now.

"You see, it's true!" one of them hissed to the other. "I knew it!"

Unfortunately, her friend looked more terrified by this than anything else, and sidled back a step behind her friend as if the two young men in front of her had suddenly transformed into monsters before her eyes.

"I certainly hope his research is going to be carried on by others here at the University," Ryou said. "I know he would have hated to see all his hard work go to waste."

Pale and thin-lipped now, the polite girl shook her head curtly. "I'm pretty certain the University doesn't want anything else to do with Satomi's work now," she said.

"I can imagine," Bakura said. "Too many bad associations and unpleasant rumors, no doubt!"

"But, someone must be interested in carrying on his work," Ryou persisted. "Are you sure everything was lost in the fire?"

"The police where here after he died," the second girl spoke up for the first time, while the third one cowered behind her. "I know they retrieved some material from his office, but I bet the university retained all his files, since they didn't want all his work to get out to the public. At least, that's what I heard. Plus, you know," she went on, looking to her friends now with , "there was that man who worked with him, remember? That doctor who came here sometimes - you know, the one who was so gorgeous?"

They certainly did remember; Ryou could see it in the way their eyes suddenly glazed over, and all thoughts of tragedy were forgotten. Even the nervous girl smiled in a swooning haze of memory.

"Oh yes! He had the most beautiful voice! I wish he'd come and teach here!" she said dreamily.

"That's right," the polite girl said, once again recovering herself more quickly than the other two. "I heard he used to be a student of Satomi's in Tokyo, or something like that."

"Ah-ha," Bakura said, "That's better news! What was this gorgeous doctor's name, by the way?"

They all blinked up at him, looked at each other, and shrugged.

"I never heard," the second girl said, pressing her fingertip to her chin. "Now that I think of it - did you?"

They all shook their heads. Ryou's shoulders sagged.

"Could you possibly direct us to someone who might know?" Bakura asked through clenched teeth. His fingers twitched at his sides, and Ryou was just glad he managed to be as civil as he was at that moment. All frustration considered, he wasn't sure he would do much better.

The polite girl clenched her hands under her chin and seemed to consider them carefully for a moment.

"Well," she began, and hesitated before finally rushing onward. "I've heard there's some things the police recovered from the medical lab that are being stored in the locker room of the gymnasium." She pointed toward one of the large buildings that had also been part of the University. Yellow caution tape fluttered in the wind all around its blackened brick walls.

"But no one's allowed in there," the nervous girl gasped. "The fire spread to that building, and it's not safe!"

"Maybe that's why," the polite girl said, "but I've heard there's another reason it's been forbidden to go in there," she added darkly.

Bakura smiled down at her. She blushed so brightly that Ryou thought he could see steam rising off her cheeks in the cold air. He decided that, for once, he didn't mind.

"Thank you very much," he said to her. "You've been very helpful!"

"But don't tell anyone I told you about it!" she answered, wringing her hands again. "You said you knew Dr. Satomi, so..."

"Of course," Bakura said. He glared past her at the other two. "No one will get you into trouble for helping us, I'm sure!"

The two girls clutched each other's arms and nodded. Ryou hoped that would be enough. Even if there wasn't really anything hidden away in the cordoned-off building, it certainly did sound like the school would rather forget Dr. Satomi, and might not approve of their students gossiping about him to strangers.

Scientific geniuses, he reflected unhappily as they trudged across the snow covered lawn, led far too interesting lives.

"That was clever of you to pretend we were colleages of the dearly departed doctor," Bakura said as they walked. "You lie much more convincingly than you used to,_Yadonushi_!"

Ryou winced. "I don't know; how can we keep pretending we knew him when we don't even know what he looked like? To say nothing of his mysterious colleague."

"Ah yes," Bakura nodded. "The gorgeous man from Tokyo! I wonder who he is and what he's got to do with everything?"

"I don't know. I don't know _what's_ going on here, but there is something very strange about this Dr. Satomi - don't you think so?"

Bakura walked along silently for a minute, eyes fixed on the charred remains of the buildings on the other side of the fence.

"If I didn't, I would've given up and left by now," he said ominously.

The yellow "caution" tape had turned the area around the gymnasium into an obstacle course, but other than that, no one paid them any attention as they approached, although there were a few other unexpected dangers. At one point they were nearly trampled by a small herd of high school students hurrying to their classes, so intent on an esoteric discussion of some literary work they were studying that, for once, they didn't even notice two unusual look alikes in their midst. Then, just as he and Bakura stepped out into the service road that ran between the gymnasium and the main high school building, Bakura grabbed Ryou's arm and yanked him backward, barely in time to keep him from being run over by a motorcycle that came whizzing around the corner.

Bakura swore, Ryou yelped. The bike swerved sharply, tipping so far that the sidecar attached to it left the ground for a second. The driver swore as well, and the passenger in the sidecar clutched his wide-brimmed hat to his head for all he was worth. The driver barely paused long enough to glare at them as she regained her balance.

"Sorry!" she shouted, not the least bit apologetic. She was obviously not a student; Ryou was fairly certain her form-fitting, lightning-blue bodysuit was not part of the Shion uniform. She looked almost too slight to handle the machine she was riding, but she maneuvered it with practiced ease. "Be more careful!"

He caught a vivid glimpse the driver's face under her helmet, of sharp blue eyes and a star-shaped mark on the girl's cheek as she scowled at them. Her companion, who was so tall he looked like a grownup squeezed into a kiddy ride in the sidecar, lifted his head to look at them from under the wide brim of his hat. He appeared amused, but his odd smile faltered when he caught sight of them.

"Watch what you're doing," Bakura growled; they probably didn't hear him over the roar and rush of wind from the bike, but Ryou felt the need to compensate for him by smiling and giving them an apologetic wave as they sped away.

Then they were gone in a blur of blue and black, the passenger's hair, hat, and coat fluttering like ragged wings as the driver zigged and zagged through the maze of yellow tape and out through the campus gate.

"This place is even more dangerous than it looks," Bakura said irritably. "Let's find that locker room and get the information we need, so we can get out of here!"

Ryou nodded, caught his breath, and led the way to the charred building.

Whether the locker room was forbidden territory because it was unsafe or because it was the repository of secret information rescued from the disastor, actual security did not live up to the rumors in either case. No one stopped them or even seemed to noticed when they wandered inside. In spite of this, they soon found that their guide had been at least partially correct. Not only the locker room but part of the basketball court was filled with a chaotic jumble, like a small-scale reflection of the ruined mess outside. It was definitely all from the science lab, Ryou observed with relief. Boxes crammed and overflowing with files and paper, bins full of jumbled lap equipment, cabinets holding jars and canisters of chemicals, and random pieces of school furniture were piled and jammed in every corner. A few students wearing lab smocks crouched over bins, sorting items into piles, while a harried-looking woman in a nurse's uniform shook her head and muttered as she flipped back and forth through the lists on a clipboard. No one even noticed the two of them wending their way through the mess.

Ryou looked around for someone who might be in charge of the chaos. Bakura picked his way through the clutter, peering at everything as if it was all equally of interest, but he paid special (though apparently casual) attention to the boxes of papers and file folders.

Ryou watched him nervously, waiting for someone to pounce on them with a lot of suspicious questions. He very much doubted that Dr. Satomi's controversial and important cloning research would be lying around in boxes in plain sight, considering the circumstances, even if the rumors that scared the high school girls away were exaggerated. On the other hand, he didn't see how anyone would be able to tell if Satomi's files were there or not.

"Can I help you with something?"

Ryou jumped a foot in the air. The person who had spoken, a thin young man in a rumpled, smudged lab coat standing inches behind him, jumped as well and gasped. He looked even more startled than Ryou felt, which had to mean his heart was about to stop.

"I'm sorry!" Ryou and the lab assistant burst out breathlessly at the same time.

"I shouldn't have..." Ryou began.

"I didn't mean..." the assistant stammered.

They both stopped again and caught their breaths. Ryou saw Bakura looking over at them from a nearby stack of boxes, smirking at the mutual show of polite panic.

"Forgive me," the lab assistant said with a nervous giggle. "We're all a little flustered here, as you can see. What can I - er - " he suddenly noticed Bakura, did a double take, and quickly sidled over to the same stack of boxes.

"Excuse me, but that's, um, not filed properly yet." He slapped a lid over the box, right under Bakura's hands. "If you want something in particular from the files, you'll have to leave the information with me, and we'll get back to you when we find it, um, that is, when we have our files organized again."

"Did you manage to save everything from the fire, then?" Bakura asked.

The young man paused, blinked, licked his lips, and blinked again.

"We're not sure yet," he said hesitantly. "We haven't had a chance to do a proper inventory, of course. We're working around the clock, practically, to catch up..."

"What about Dr. Satomi's research?" Bakura asked. "I don't suppose you can put your hands on that for us, can you?"

Ryou winced at Bakura's bluntness. He wasn't surprised when the startled assistant seemed to choke on his breath for a second, but then the boy squinted at Bakura and himself as if seeing them for the first time.

"Dr. Satomi?" he said in a breathless whisper. "Wait - are you two - the couriers - ? But I just... they were just... Then who?" he went on absently, waving his hand toward the door. "Oh. Wait."

Ryou thought he was going to snap his neck by looking back and forth between them so rapidly. The pulse jumped in his temple, and he repeatedly smoothed one hand over the other down the front of his rumpled coat. "Dr. Satomi... oh, no. Of course, you're not the couriers! But then, that means you must be... "

Bakura grinned. He leaned forward over the stack of boxes, closing in on the sweating, fidgeting lab assistant.

"What if we are?" he said quietly.

Ryou's heart pounded. He had no idea what was going on; he wasn't sure if Bakura had figured out something important or if - more likely - he was having too much fun terrorizing the nervous young man to care.

Suddenly the lab assistant broke down. With a whimper, he dropped his face into his hands and shook his head.

"I'm sorry," he said hoarsely, not polite but frantic. "I don't know anything about it, anything at all."

He sidled away between the boxes without looking up at them again, still shaking his head, then ducked into another room and quickly closed the door. Ryou looked after him, baffled, then joined Bakura behind the stack of boxes.

"What was that about?" he asked in a hushed voice. "Should we go after him?"

Bakura, still grinning, slipped out from behind the boxes and took Ryou by the arm. To Ryou's surprise, he headed for the exit.

"Isn't this interesting?" Bakura mused. "The late Dr. Satomi's research is valuable enough for a timid lab assistant to steal and sell, apparently. That's quite promising, from our point of view!"

"It is?" Ryou said incredulously, as they started back the way they'd come. "He did? Oh! Is that why he was so nervous?"

"Obviously," Bakura said. "He's clearly not accustomed to selling secret research, so someone must have come to him with an offer he couldn't refuse. That means someone is interested enough in Dr. Satomi's work to offer enough money to make a student risk his entire career for it."

"This isn't an easy school to get into, from what I read in that article," Ryou said. "Anyone who made it as far as research assistant would be crazy or desperate to risk throwing away all of that."

"Or, he would have been given an offer that he found impossible to pass up on. Not only that, but the people who made the offer must be very confident in themselves and the secret of their true identity, because he is obviously not going to keep the theft a secret very long."

Ryou scowled. Maybe the assistant wasn't always as nervous as he'd been just then, but it was hard to imagine him as a likely candidate to entrust with deep, dangerous secrets. "They must not care what he does once they get their information," he said. "Or what happens to him after that."

"Of course not. I bet they trust their couriers a lot more, though."

"Their couriers?" Ryou said. They were crossing the service road again, and suddenly he knew exactly what Bakura was thinking. "Oh! Of course. That motorbike that nearly ran over us! But that means he just barely handed the files to them before we got there!"

"Yes, and isn't it a shame," Bakura said. "If we hadn't spent so many pleasant minutes gossiping with the schoolgirls, we might have caught him in the act, and met the couriers in person! As it is, we'll just have to track down the that motorbike somehow."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Ryou wondered.

Bakura shrugged. "Maybe they have a website?" he said with a grin.

_Continued in Chapter 3_


	4. part 1 chapter 3

**All Possible Worlds, Part 1 Chapter 3 of 8: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing**

Author: _Tsutsuji_

Rating: PG13

Warnings: A little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)

Reviews and comments appreciated!

Chapter summary: Bakura and Ryou gather a little more worrisome information, which leads them to Shinjuki in Tokyo, under the ominous shadow of the Limitless Fortress.

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 3**

Ryou thought Bakura was serious about the couriers having a website when they got home and he immediately opened up Ryou's laptop and logged in. But within minutes, he slapped the lid shut and stood up.

"Did you find something already?" Ryou said. He'd barely had time to start making lunch, but he was already having second thoughts about following this particular lead. Satomi was dead, his work destroyed or missing, his one colleague an unnamed mystery - and, now that Ryou thought about it, the police verdict of suicide was starting to seem a little questionable, all things considered.

In spite of all this, Bakura was already heading for the door again.

"Where are you going!" Ryou cried in alarm. "You're not going after those couriers by yourself!"

"No, but I'm going to meet some people who might know of them. If my contacts are correct, they're more properly known as 'Transporters.' Possibly very famous ones. "

"What does that mean?" Ryou asked. Something about the way Bakura's lip curled when he said the word made it sound like another one of those things he wished he didn't have to know about.

"It means that this may be even more important than we thought. Ordinary criminals hire ordinary couriers. Only extraordinary ones hire Transporters!"

"Bakura!" Ryou rushed over to grab his arm and pull him back from the door. Bakura turned and looked down at him, irritation softening into a frown.

"Maybe we should just try hunting down one of our other leads!" Ryou insisted. "This is getting - complicated!"

"It's getting interesting!" Bakura replied with a grin. He put his hand on Ryou's. "Don't worry, _Yadonushi_. I'm just getting information, for now."

"Then I should go with you," Ryou began, but Bakura gently pushed him back.

"Not this time, my pretty one," he said gently. Ryou flushed at that rarely-used pet name. Bakura caught Ryou's face in his palms. "I'm not being incautious. I just don't care to let certain of my associates anywhere near my precious _Yadonushi_!" He leered at Ryou. "Besides, if you think I'm too crude for mixed company, you definitely don't want to hear what they'd have to say if they laid their eyes on you!"

"Oh!" Ryou had quietly accepted the fact that Bakura remained a thief even in his new life in the modern world; Bakura's "connections" in that area were another aspect of their life that Ryou didn't think about if he could avoid it.

"I won't be long." Bakura kissed him. "Believe me, you know I never want to waste time we could be spending together."

"I know," Ryou said. He didn't say what they both knew that meant: their time together could be short, if they couldn't find a way to keep Bakura's cloned body from breaking down.

Reluctantly, Bakura let his hands slide free of Ryou's face and turned away toward the door. Before he went out, he turned back to Ryou.

"See what else you can find out about Satomi's death and the fire at the school. They're hardly likely to be coincidence." He grinned, and then he slipped out the door and was gone.

Ryou sighed. "You make 'no coincidence' sound like a good thing," he said.

The research kept him distracted, however, until Bakura returned half an hour later. He wished he'd checked the news before they set out for Shion; it would have saved them getting into the middle of whatever it was they'd gotten into the middle of. Unfortunately, the worse it sounded, the more intriguing it was. Even he couldn't deny his curiosity now, and getting Bakura to change course at this point would be beyond impossible.

Bakura sauntered in, obviously quite pleased with himself, and looked over Ryou's shoulder at the news article on the computer screen.

"Ah, I see you found out about that too. Interesting, isn't it? Serial murders in Kyoto, the victims' all having locks of their hair cut off, and all of it stopping after the controversial Dr. Satomi stabbed himself and tossed his own body in the estuary. More coincidence, of course!"

He sounded entirely too cheerful about a string of grisly deaths. Then again, Ryou suspected he'd seen much worse somewhere in those nightmares of a past they never discussed.

"There's no official accusation that Satomi was responsible for the murders," Ryou said, "but the connection seems rather obvious to me - especially considering that Drakken made your body from a lock of my hair! Now I'm surprised those girls weren't even more shocked and suspicious when we showed up looking for Satomi than they were."

"Ah, but they did seem to think we might be part of his research," Bakura said.

"You noticed that too? It's hard to believe they really thought that, though. There's nothing official about _human_ cloning in any of the reports, either - only the fact that Satomi's brilliant work was so controversial that he was never promoted, for reasons too shocking to reveal, apparently. The question is, did Dr. Satomi actually _do_ it, or is it all just rumors?""

"Of course, a prestigious university would never admit it allowed something so unethical to continue under their noses," Bakura said dismissively. "But if that moron Drakken could do this," he continued, waving his hand at himself, "a respected scientist at a prestigious medical university could certainly manage human cloning!"

"I suppose, although that still doesn't prove that he actually _did_."

"Ah, but he did _something_, or else why did someone hire the best - and most deadly - Transporter team in the business to deliver his research notes to them?"

"The most deadly?" Ryou cried. "What does that mean?"

"It means, we have to go to Tokyo. That's where those two usually work. Chances are, the people that hired them are there, too."

"Tokyo! That's where the receptionist said Satomi's colleague was from, too!"

"That's right. More coincidence! Time to get out that magical plastic card again," Bakura said happily. "I already bought train tickets."

"When do we leave?" Ryou asked helplessly.

"About - " Bakura glanced at the time on the computer screen. "One hour."

"One hour!" Ryou echoed, although he was actually surprised it wasn't sooner, all things considered.

"Soonest I could get from Domino station. Just time enough for a bite to eat..." he leaned across and snatched a few bites from the plate Ryou had left beside the laptop, and then wrapped his arms around Ryou from behind more firmly. "...And a _nap_."

Ryou sighed. "Just barely," he said.

Of course, by _nap_, Bakura didn't actually mean anything like _sleep_. Ryou did a little of that later on the train, but the rumble and hum and the flashing lights outside the window, as evening fell and they drew near Tokyo, all found their way into his dream. He saw himself racing along beside the train, and then running on top of it (thinking even as he dreamed that he'd seen too many adventure movies). At first he was simply running, but then he realized he was desperately trying to catch up with Bakura before the racing motorcycle that was chasing him did. A tall, thin man in a lab coat streaked with soot and spattered with red stood swaying in the sidecar, leaning, reaching, ever closer to Bakura's spiky, moon-silver hair, with a pair of shining blades in his hands.

"Ah!" Ryou shuddered himself awake, looking around wildly at the strange lights of the rail car. Bakura's face suddenly appeared in front of him, grinning like one of the more demented creatures in his deck of Duel Monsters cards.

"Having a nice nightmare?" Bakura said, quite unsympathetically.

"You hate flying, I don't sleep well on trains," Ryou snapped back, turning his face away.

"Sorry, _Yadonushi_," Bakura said more gently. He put his arm around Ryou's shoulders, and didn't allow Ryou to shrug it off (for which Ryou was grateful, but not in a mood to admit it).

He didn't relent but he didn't resist, either, when Bakura pulled him closer and nestled his cheek against the side of Ryou's head. He reached over and placed his hand on Ryou's chest, letting his palm rest against the Millennium Ring Ryou wore under his shirt.

_"I was too preoccupied, thinking about those files and these Transporters we're going to have to defeat to get them." _The Voice was soft and warm in Ryou's mind, a comforting presence, far from being the terror it once was._ "I didn't realize you were really having a bad dream. I thought you just woke up suddenly because the train stopped. You looked so endearingly startled, I couldn't resist teasing you!_"

Ryou sighed. He sometimes thought the "sound" of that Voice in his mind was the first thing he'd started to fall in love with, as strange as that seemed at the time. When Bakura remembered how to be gentle with him like this, it was almost more than his heart could bear. He certainly couldn't stay angry, even if his nerves still twitched with tension. He turned his head just enough to nuzzle his lips against Bakura's, sheltered from any onlookers' view by the pale curtain of hair that fell over his face.

Bakura's hands closed a little more tightly where they rested on his shoulder and his chest. Then, at the same moment, they drew apart, and Ryou looked up again. He hadn't even noticed that the train had stopped, but Bakura was right: they were already in Shinjuku Station. He must have slept longer than he'd realized. Most people had already left the car; the rest were still gathering their belongings.

He and Bakura didn't have anything to gather except Ryou's backpack. A few seconds later they were standing on the pavement outside, looking around at the half-lit city under a clear, autumn-sunset sky. The contrast from the ancient, settled atmosphere of Kyoto was shocking; Tokyo flashed, glittered, and hummed with the energy of a city racing toward the future at the speed of light. He looked out at the dizzying display of lighted streets, feeling bewildered by it all.

"What, exactly, are we going to do now that we're here?" Ryou asked. "It's not exactly going to be easy to find a single motorcycle in this place, you know. Did your connections give you more of a lead than just 'somewhere in Tokyo,' I hope?"

"As a matter of fact, they did mention a few places these two have been known to hang around. One of them is right there, in fact."

He pointed, up and across the streets and rooftops. At first, Ryou couldn't make out what he was pointing at among the mass of high rise buildings and flashing neon that surrounded them. Then he noticed something, a shadowy shape against the dark sky, taller than all the other buildings. It looked, oddly enough, like a huge, skeletal ruin, with a few lights blinking like lost stars against the darkening sky.

"What is that? I've never heard of anything like that being in Tokyo before." The darkness of it in the midst of all the glittering life around them gave him a distinctly uneasy feeling, as if it was a ghost that no one else could see.

"It's some kind of unfinished super-project, or something like that," Bakura shrugged. "I never heard of it either, until today. One of my charming, knowledgeable acquaintances didn't believe it existed, but the other insists it's connected to those Transporters somehow. They said it's called _Mugenjou_ - Infinity Fortress."

"How inviting! And by the way, speaking of them," Ryou said as they started walking in the general direction of the shadowy ruin, "what did you mean by 'deadly'? Who are they, anyway?"

"When I described the two on the motorcycle, my informant said the man perfectly fit the description of a Transporter known as - you'll love this! - Dr. Jackal."

"Ah. Doesn't _that_ sound promising," Ryou said. His mild tone of sarcasm might have been missed by anyone who didn't know him better, but it was not lost on Bakura.

"Doesn't it! And the woman is known as Lady Poison."

Ryou stopped in his tracks. "And we're trying to _find_ these people?" he exclaimed. "Bakura, maybe we should just go back to the Masaki shrine and wait for that house to come back from wherever it went!"

Not reassuringly, Bakura reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his deck of Duel Monsters cards. Even though all he did was stroke the back of the top card lightly with his fingertips, Ryou felt the answering vibration as Shadow Magic awakened in the Ring.

"We could, but where would the fun be in that?" he grinned. "I've prepared a special deck for the occasion. My contacts told me these Transporters have some interesting, shall we say, talents, but even so, they won't be prepared to face a Game of Shadows!"

"Bakura!" Ryou stared at him in horror. He almost asked what kind of talents the Transporters were supposed to have, but decided he didn't want to know, and he certainly didn't want a personal demonstration of them, whatever they were.

Then a more important question surfaced, one that he realized had been lurking in his mind ever since the day Bakura had come to life in this new body in Drakken's lab.

"Are you sure you can still use Shadow Magic and summon the card monsters that way? You haven't dueled using magic since ..."

"Rest assured, _Yadonushi_, I can use Shadow Magic as well as ever, as long as you're near me with the Ring. It depends entirely on our connection."

Ryou pouted at him doubtfully. "How do you know that for certain?"

"I've been practicing, while you were at school. I discovered that our proximity to each other now affects the power of the Shadow Magic I'm able to call upon; if you are some distance away, it's limited; if you are within sight (as I found out when you were sleeping), my powers are as strong as ever, and so are the creatures I'm able to summon."

"Fine time to tell me all this," Ryou said sulkily to hide the horrible feeling that was clutching ever deeper in his gut. "Shouldn't you just wear the Ring, then? Won't that make you safer?"

He'd meant to say "won't that make your magic stronger," but his fear for Bakura leaked out before he could hide it.

Bakura smiled knowingly.

_"But then, my Ryou, I would not be able to share my thoughts with you like this. My connection to the Shadow Realm might be stronger, although I can't be sure of that since I didn't make that experiment, but my connection to you would be weaker, and that is not something I wish to experience."_

Bakura stood in front of him and placed his hands on Ryou's shoulders.

"I know how much you hate the idea of a Shadow Duel, and perhaps it won't come to that. Perhaps what I was told concerning the abilities of these Transporters is an exaggeration, in which case we'll merely have to distract them long enough to relieve them of the files. But the one thing my informants were certain of is this: if those people do have anything to do with that place," he nodded his head toward the half-seen towers, "and that information gets there, no one will ever be able to get it back. Possibly not even me! If Satomi did know how to create a human clone - a stable, real, viable human clone - I need to try to get hold of that knowledge. We might not find them in time, the information might not even be what we need, but how can I walk away from the chance if it means I can make this body last - if it means I can stay with you forever?"

Ryou looked up into Bakura's blue eyes. There was no doubt in them; Bakura was, as ever, confident to the point of foolhardy arrogance. But he'd been thinking he was the one who was more obsessed with this quest, and that he was the most desperate to keep Bakura there with him either in this body or a new, better one - the most terrified of what would happen if the body failed. He could see now that he wasn't.

He didn't say anything, but nodded. Ignoring the crowds pouring out from and into the train station behind them, he slid forward and wrapped his arms around Bakura.

After a minute, he pulled away. Bakura's hand lingered in his hair. Ryou closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again, looking up over the heads of the crowds in the street and past the neon labyrinth of the city.

"Let's go find them, then," he said.

_Continued in Chapter 4_

_(AN: Sorry not much happens in this chapter - things are going to get more lively soon, I promise!)_


	5. part 1 chapter 4

**All Possible Worlds, Part 1, chapter 4 of 8: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing**

Author: Tsutsuji

Rating: PG13

Warnings: - a little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)

_AN: Ah, the joy of crossovers - how to explain enough for the benefit of readers who might not know much about the different series (assuming they even bother to read a story about characters they don't know), without boring readers who know all of it already. I hope this chapter isn't too boring and repetitious. Please let me know what you think of it! (I'm really not too sure about The Count and about Hisoka in particular, they both seem a bit off to me, but maybe they're okay??)_

Chapter summary: As the ripples spread from the theft of Satomi's file, several new players enter the game.

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 4**

Chief Konoe, head of the Shokan Division of EnmaCho, the judgement bureau of the afterlife, bowed briefly and tried not to shuffle his feet on the plush carpet of the drawing room in the Hall of Candles. He could see that The Count was displeased. It was difficult to say how, exactly, since the silver mask that covered half of the Count's otherwise invisible face didn't show any expression. Even so, it was quite clear that something was bothering him, even aside from the fact of this sudden, urgent meeting here in the Count's elegant but gloomy home.

Konoe braced himself for another report of serial murders or souls that had not passed on when they should have, or some other mysterious disturbance in the normal flow of souls entering the afterlife. In some ways, what he heard was worse than he expected.

"Satomi's records," The Count began, and Konoe's heart sank immediately.

"They should all have been destroyed by the fire," Konoe said.

"But they weren't," the Count replied, his voice edged with irritation and worry, "at least not all of them. In fact, they have left the school, and are on their way to Tokyo at this very moment."

"Tokyo!" Konoe exclaimed. "Then, Muraki - ?"

The invisible head shook slowly side to side. "Perhaps he had associates there that we don't know about, but there are others who might be interested in Satomi's research as well. For example..."

Konoe jumped as something poke him in the knee. He realized that Watson, the Count's tiny, decrepit servant, had hobbled up to him unnoticed, but instead of offering him cake and tea or a glass of the intriguing liquor the Count was sipping as he'd hoped, Watson held up a piece of paper for him to read. Scowling, Konoe plucked it from the servant's trembling fingers and quickly scanned the words on the report.

"The Egyptian! I see! But I've heard we're not allowed to interfere in that case," he said, looking to the Count for confirmation.

"True," the Count agreed. He sat back in his arm chair and watched the gentle swirl of the amethyst colored liquor in his glass. "However, if you read the rest, you'll see why we have to get involved after all - aside from the mere fact of certain old medical records that were among Satomi's research papers that were taken."

"Oh," Konoe said as he read the rest. "T_hat_ one, is it?" He shook his head and frowned. "But that means there's only one person we can send to deal with it, I suppose. The last person I would have picked under any other circumstances, if those files contain the information you just mentioned."

"I'm afraid so," the Count confirmed. "It seems that Satomi made copies of the elder doctor's records, unknown to all of us. It's astonishing that they survived the fire, but now that they've surfaced again after all these years, they're already attracting far too much interest."

He sighed dramatically. "It's unfortunate, but you're quite correct; the only Shinigami we can send to retrieve those files is the unfortunate subject of them. Even though he's barely had time to recover from the incident in Kyoto, you'll have to send my dear Tsuzuki, I'm afraid. And there's no time to lose. That information must not be allowed to reach any other interested parties, whomever they may be!"

Konoe nodded. "I agree," he said, his face grim. He stuffed the paper in his pocket and gave the Count a quick bow before turning to leave. "I'll send him right away - as soon as I can find him, that is. Kurasaki can go along with him; that should be an interesting experience for him!"

On his way out the door, he heard the Count murmuring to Watson. "I must think of a way to cheer up poor Tsuzuki after all of this is over. Perhaps I'll throw a party for him here! Yes, that's just the thing - Prepare invitations to for everyone in the department, Watson, so you can deliver them as soon as... "

Konoe closed the door on the Count's voice and cringed. Sending Tsuzuki on this mission was bad enough; now there was one more thing he had to not look forward to.

* * *

A short time later, as time passes in the netherworld of JuoCho, Hisoka Kurosaki, one half of the Summons Department's best (and newest) team of Shinigami, was coming back from a solitary evening walk under the perpetually blooming cherry blossoms, when Chief Konoe came striding up to him. The Chief's bustling impatience pierced Hisoka's sensitive empathy like a wire brush, quickly destroying the serenity of his walk.

"Kurosaki! Where have you been, and where's Tsuzuki! You're supposed to be partners!"

Hisoka scowled at the unexpected and unreasonable scolding.

"We're not on duty," he pointed out. "I don't have to keep track of Tsuzuki all the time, do I?"

He was immediately aware of how sulky he sounded, and half expected Konoe to bark at him for acting like a kid. The fact was, he had tried to keep track of Tsuzuki, especially lately, but against his own instincts, he'd let older Shinigami slip off on his own far too often, and he already felt guilty about it. Then he realized that Konoe's agitated emotions had little to do with him; something more important was bothering the Chief.

"You _are_ on duty as of right now - well, unofficially," Konoe announced. "Technically, this isn't a case for the Summons Bureau. In fact, it's a follow up to your last case, I'm afraid. There's a loose end that needs to be tied up, and you and Tsuzuki are the only ones who can do it."

Hisoka stared. "Our last case? Kyoto?"

The evening air in JouCho was not cold, but Hisoka shivered under his jacket, even though the mention of his last case with Tsuzuki brought back vivid memories of a blazing inferno. His skin crawled, as if the spell-markings on it had suddenly come to life. "Muraki...?"

Konoe shook his head once. "It has to do with him in a way, but only indirectly," he assured Hisoka quickly. "He left behind records of his work, which he must have given to Dr. Satomi. We didn't realize Satomi made copies of the information at the school, and now those files have been stolen."

"His work? What information?" Hisoka began, but almost immediately, he guessed what Konoe must be referring to. It could only be the same information Muraki had revealed to Tsuzuki about himself - a revelation that had nearly shattered Tsuzuki's soul. "He had information about Tsuzuki, didn't he? About his powers, and things in his past..."

Through his empathic powers, he felt Konoe's emotions spike, giving him his answer. Hisoka realized the Chief might know far more about Tsuzuki's past than even the dreadful hints he'd heard when Muraki's revelations had sent his partner spiraling into a self-destructive depression. He was as certain as ever that Tsuzuki was completely human in every way that mattered, but clearly there were secrets behind those amethyst eyes, perhaps even more than Tsuzuki himself was aware of.

"That information should have been destroyed," Konoe growled in a way that indicated someone, somewhere, had slipped up and was going to be hearing about it soon. At least, Hisoka thought, for once it didn't appear to be Tsuzuki's fault.

"I'm sorry," Konoe said, suddenly dropping his voice to a tone that was still gruff but surprisingly gentle. "I expect you want to forget what happened in Kyoto, and I'm sure Tsuzuki wants to forget it if he can, but I can't trust anyone else to retrieve this information. You'll have to find Tsuzuki immediately and go after it yourselves. At least you don't have to return to Kyoto, though. From what we know, the files have already left your sector, and they're on their way to Tokyo!"

"Tokyo!" Hisoka echoed. "In that case, what about - ?"

Konoe cut him off with a wave of his hand and shook his head. "No one else from the Summons Department can be involved in this. The fact is, you really shouldn't have any trouble retrieving the files, as long as you hurry! I'm only worried about what it might do to Tsuzuki if he sees them."

He fixed Hisoka with a expression that was as intense and desperate as he'd ever seen on the gruff administrator. It was a look that Konoe only got when Tsuzuki was involved, and for all its fierceness, Hisoka hardly needed his empathic powers to know the real feelings behind it. He realized that Konoe meant him to sense what he was reluctant to put into words.

"Those files should have been destroyed already," he said. "Make sure of it this time, Kurosaki!"

Hisoka nodded. "We'll do it," he said.

The "_We_" part of that was the only problem, of course.

"Damn!" he muttered after Konoe left him a moment later. "Where's my idiot of a partner when he's needed?"

He could hardly be angry at Tsuzuki, though; he'd needed some time alone as well, even after recovering from injuries that were almost more than their Shinigami healing powers could withstand. He'd had a lot to think about, not least of which was the shame he felt that he hadn't been able to do more and hadn't acted sooner to save Tsuzuki. Now, he could add guilt for not keeping a closer eye on his volatile partner.

That was part of the reason he'd left him alone, but there were other reasons he was reluctant to stay so close to Tsuzuki all the time now, too, much more personal ones that had more to do with his own emotions than Tsuzuki's. After all that had happened, all that Tsuzuki had done for him and all it had meant, Hisoka's feelings toward the older Shinigami had become too confusing to face. It wasn't time to deal with that now, though, he told himself.

"How can I find him? He might not be back for hours..." he wondered.

He couldn't sense Tsuzuki's emotions; he was either too far away or not feeling anything strongly enough for Hisoka to pick up, or both. If his partner was in any danger, even (or especially) from himself, he was certain he'd know it right away, but instead Tsuzuki always felt less depressed when he went off on his own like this, his emotions less jarring to Hisoka's highly sensitive empathy.

Recalling all the times Tsuzuki had come to his aid, supported him or rescued him in the short time since they'd been paired up as partners, Hisoka remembered that there were other ways to find someone besides tracing their emotions through his empathic powers. He was still not much good at magic, and he knew he had a long way to go before he could summon as Tsuzuki, but he'd been practicing enough that he might at least be able to manage a relatively simple spell like summoning a tracking spirit to find Tsuzuki.

He was still a little surprised when it worked, when the little origami bird in his hand fluttered to life and soared off into the dark sky. He was a great deal more shocked at the place it led him to.

He found Tsuzuki at the edge of the rubble, just inside the line of flimsy walls and yellow caution tape that was strung like a web across the burned out area. He stood with his hands deep in his coat pockets, staring up at the darkening sky. Tsuzuki turned when he saw the little ghostlike bird circle overhead, and Hisoka saw his eyes - gleaming dark amethyst, distant but not entirely empty.

Hisoka approached, quickly but cautiously, prepared to be caught by a blast of raw emotion, or, worse yet, to be frozen by the cold and empty depths he'd sensed in Tsuzuki, here at this very place not long ago. He was surprised to find only a slight ripple of surprise, then a flash of irritation and embarrassment at having his solitude interrupted, and then that turned to a warm rush of welcome when he saw who it was. Tsuzuki smiled, making Hisoka catch his breath, but then his expression changed to a frown of concern.

"Hisoka! What's wrong?"

"I never expected to find you here," Hisoka said, dropping down to stand beside him. "Is this where you've been disappearing to every night?" How ironic, he thought, if those files were here all along and no one knew it.

"Sometimes," Tsuzuki said with a little sigh and a typical, shame-faced grin. "It's strange, isn't it? It's peaceful, even though it looks like this. I know what happened here, but even though it's familiar, I can hardly remember."

"You weren't yourself," Hisoka muttered gruffly. "Of course you don't remember it all."

"Wasn't I?" Tsuzuki mused. "I'm not so sure."

He turned away from the ruins as if shaking himself out of his reverie.

"Anyway, Hisoka, what are you doing here? You're getting good with fuda, by the way!" he added as the tracking spirit fluttered into Hisoka's hand and turned back into paper. "I'll have to watch out from now on! That's quite an improvement, especially considering you were completely useless with magic to start with."

"It's nothing much," Hisoka muttered, caught between pride at the compliment from his highly-skilled and powerful partner, and shame at the casual reminder of just how bad he really was with magic. "I just needed a way to find you in a hurry."

"Why? Oh, no - it's not work, is it? The Chief didn't send you all the way out here after me for a job, did he?"

Tsuzuki's voice rose into a whine. Hisoka would have laughed at his predictable reaction, if it wasn't unfortunately true. His partner's natural aversion to work had become nearly as endearing as it was annoying. He wished it was only ordinary work, though. Retrieving lost souls and bringing them to judgment was not usually pleasant; it was really no wonder Tsuzuki did his best to avoid doing what had to be done. Soon after they were partnered, Hisoka had realized that Tsuzuki took every job personally, and some even more than others, even when they dealt with total strangers. In this case, though, the job truly was personal.

Hisoka hesitated. Tsuzuki just stood there now with his back to the ruins, pouting unhappily but innocently, as if he had nothing worse in the world to worry about besides having to do actual work and maybe missing a chance at dessert. It made Hisoka wish he'd just sidestepped Konoe's orders and ignored the rule about Shinigami working in pairs, and taken on the entire task himself, so that Tsuzuki didn't even have to know about it.

"There's something we have to retrieve," he admitted reluctantly.

"Ah! I knew it!" Tsuzuki wailed pitifully, before Hisoka could explain that it wasn't a lost soul they were after. "Ah, well, where are we going, then? We have to have dinner first, anyway!"

Hisoka rolled his eyes and sighed, but it was a relief to have Tsuzuki obsessing over food as usual. Maybe that was why Konoe had slipped him enough yen for a whole day's expenses; now that he thought about it, food was a perfect distraction from whatever they were about to face.

"It's not even in our district," he said. "As a matter of fact, we're going to Tokyo. I'm sure you can find something to eat once we get there!"

Tsuzuki got so excited at the mere thought of eating out in Tokyo, that it didn't seem to occur to him to wonder why they'd been given an assignment right in the heart of the Enmacho sector itself.

* * *

"We're way ahead of schedule," Himiko observed as she pulled off her helmet after parking the bike by the curb. "May as well stop for dinner, I suppose."

"Yes, I suppose we might as well," Akabane said listlessly. He unfolded his long frame from the confines of the sidecar, and bent to pick up the slim, nondescript courier case, which he held at arm's length with a look of distaste.

"This job sounded so much more interesting than it's turned out to be," he said wistfully. "No matter what the client was willing to pay for this package, it doesn't appear that anyone else is particularly interested in it."

"What you mean is, no one has tried to kill us to get it, so you haven't had a chance to pull out those scalpels of yours and shed some blood yet today," she said with a dark little laugh. "If you wave it around like that in this neighborhood, somebody's likely to mug you for it, anyway. But I suppose ordinary muggers wouldn't be much fun for you either, would they, Dr. Jackal?"

Akabane sighed and tucked the bag under his arm. "No, not much fun at all. Given the price and the secrecy surrounding this item, I was expecting something much more challenging. If it wasn't for professional pride and common courtesy, I'd leave this entirely for you to handle, Lady Poison. However, having taken the assignment, I suppose I'll see it through to its boring end."

Himiko laughed. "I suppose that means you haven't got anything better to do tonight! Besides, you know who's neighborhood we're in, don't you?"

He gave her a sidelong look from under the deep brim of his black hat. "I have no idea to whom you're referring, Himiko-san," he said innocently. "I do, however, find it mildly interesting that we've been instructed to meet our client at a point so near the Limitless Fortress. Don't you?"

"Ah yes, I'm a little curious about that as well. It doesn't mean there's any connection, though. Even though I don't understand much about that place, I can't see what interest anyone there would have in some unpublished research papers from a medical university."

Akabane smiled darkly but didn't reply.

Himiko raised an eyebrow, but she knew better than to ask what he was thinking. Knowing Dr. Jackal as she did, she was certain she would only get either a cryptic answer or more disturbing information than she cared to hear. She shrugged.

"That's not our problem, though, is it? Our only concern is getting the merchandise to the client intact, and we can't do that until the appointed time. Hanging around in that neighborhood with a package like this might attract unwanted attention. That could be more entertaining for _you_, but our client might not appreciate us calling attention to the transaction that way. They want this whole thing kept quiet. And anyway, I'm hungry. Let's find some place to eat."

"I agree! Lead the way, Lady Poison," Akabane said with a little bow and a flourish. "I leave the choice of dining establishment entirely up to you, and it will be my treat."

She gave him a grin that was not particularly ladylike and sauntered past him, heading for the block of restaurants up the street. "That's part of the reason I like working with you, Dr. Jackal. Unlike _some_ people I've worked with in the past, you actually have manners!"

* * *

"_Shit_," Ban Midou spat dismissively. "It can't be that simple, Hevn-san! Not for that price." He crossed his arms and leaned back against the counter of the Honky Tonk, and regarded the Negotiator skeptically. "What is it you're not telling us about this job?"

"It's a matter of prestige for the university, Ban," Hevn said, addressing his first comment but ignoring the direct question. She tapped her manicured fingertips on the counter impatiently. "They're not just paying for the files but also for keeping the whole thing quiet. If it gets out that unpublished scientific and medical data is being stolen from the research departments there and sold on the black market, then prestigious professors interested in doing medical research will go elsewhere, students will follow them, and funding will start to dry up. It's a simple matter of economics for them, so it's worth whatever it takes to get this file back before the theft becomes public knowledge."

"Shion's in Kyoto, isn't it?" Ban said, cocking his head. "Why'd you get dragged in as the negotiator for this?"

"Because they have reason to believe the buyers are here in Tokyo, of course!" she said. "We're on a tight schedule here, Ban-san. If you're just planning to stand there asking questions all night, I'm going to have to find someone else to take this job! "

"Ban-chan, can we afford to pass this up?" Ginji nudged his partner's arm. "I mean, I know Hevn-san's jobs get us into a lot of trouble sometimes, but how dangerous can a little file be? And we can reeaally use the money right about now!"

Ban was about to reply to that when the proprietor of the Honky Tonk cleared his throat, rather pointedly. Ban and Ginji turned to where Paul stood behind the counter, arms crossed, watching the negotiation through his usual dark glasses.

"Our tab," Ban sighed. "I know, I know! All right," he said, turning back to Hevn with a shrug. "I suppose this time it might not be that bad!"

"That means you're taking the case?" Hevn said cautiously.

"Sure! As of right now, The GetBackers are officially on the job! We'll definitely get that file back for the school. And they better pay up in full," he added through gritted teeth.

Hevn quickly described how the file had been discovered missing after an unnerved student research assistant had broken down and admitted that he'd been offered an impressive amount of money for it.

"They were in the middle of moving the files into a new office," she explained, "so everything was in boxes instead of being locked up like it's supposed to be. The student had easy access, and the theft wouldn't have been discovered for days in all the confusion of moving, if his conscience hadn't gotten to him and made him confess."

"What kind of research?" Ban asked.

"They didn't tell me, and I couldn't tell you even if they did!" Hevn said. "You're being paid to protect the secrecy of this information, remember? Some kind of medical research, obviously, but my contact at the school didn't say what area of medicine. I'm sure you realize that it's a highly competitive field, and also that it could be medical research that's terribly important."

"In that case, it could be something that could help a lot of people, right?" Ginji said. "Stealing something like that is like holding sick people hostage!"

Ginji's eyes got big and shiny, and Ban's shoulders sagged. Obviously, there was no getting out of this job now that Ginji's heart was in it.

"All right, we'll get out and see what we can find out on the street," Ban said. "There's bound to be some word of a deal like this. Probably some group that buys stolen scientific data and sells it outside the country or something..." he speculated. "I can think of a few people who deal in information theft like that; we can start by asking them what they've heard. C'mon, Ginji, let's go out there and find this file!"

"All right!" Ginji's eyes lit up with a gleam of determination. He jumped from his stool at the counter and followed Ban toward the door. As Ban stepped out, Ginji turned back to Hevn and Paul with a wave and a wink of confidence. "Don't worry, Hevn-san! We'll be sure to get this file back for you!"

After they left, Hevn breathed a sigh of relief. Then she caught Paul watching her with his eyebrows poking up over the top of his dark glasses.

"What?" she said defensively.

"Why didn't you tell them everything?" he asked, and grinned when she blushed and sputtered.

"Is it my fault they didn't ask the right questions?" she said. "Besides, you didn't exactly volunteer to tell them everything you know about this, either, did you?"

"Which questions are those? The one about the big fire at the university a few days before the theft, which is the real reason the files were all being moved so they were easy for a student to get his hands on? Or the one about the professor that reports say committed suicide a few days before the fire? Or, the ones about the research he was rumored to be doing before he died?"

Hevn glared at him. "I don't know what research he was doing. What difference does it make, anyway?"

"Oh, so you don't know that part? Not completely up on the news then, are you?"

"Why? It's just medical research. Besides, it's only a file, not some kind of dangerous material or anything like that!"

"Yes, but it's not just any medical research these people are interested in. _If_ it really is Professor Satomi's research that was stolen, that is."

Hevn didn't say anything.

"So it _is_ his files, isn't it?" Paul said grimly. "Well then, how serious do you think the buyers are likely to be about getting hold of a possible breakthrough in cloning technology? Of course, it's probably only a rumor that Professor Satomi was actually having success in cloning human organs, but even if that's not it..."

"_Human_ cloning?" Hevn gasped. "But it can't be. That's not sanctioned at any research facility!"

"Of course not. It's just a rumor, after all," Paul said, but the irony in his voice made it clear what he thought of the truth in rumors. "But there's something else you didn't tell them, too, isn't there? Or didn't you hear about the serial murders in Kyoto?"

"That's - not related to this," Hevn said quickly, tossing her hair back over her shoulder with a shake of her head. "It can't be."

"Maybe not," Paul said with a tight little smile. "Maybe it's only a coincidence that all the victims had locks of their hair cut off."

Hevn stared back at him stubbornly, but she didn't believe in coincidence any more than Paul did.

"I didn't know that's what the research was about," she said defensively. "There was no reason to think the murders were connected to this at all... "

Paul stared out the window, out into the dark street where Ban and Ginji had gone and at the dark gap where skeletal towers rose above the city skyline.

"Maybe you didn't, and maybe they aren't" he conceded. "But you might at least have thought about the kind of people who'd be interested in that kind of technology for their own uses, and not just to sell. And, Hevn-san, you must have realized the kind of professionals they'd hire to bring that file to them!"

Hevn bit her lip and followed his gaze, staring out at the street beyond the window.

"_That_ part I knew," she admitted. "but if I'd told them that, or any of the the rest of it, they would've refused to take the case for sure - and since I_do_ know who was hired to bring the file to Tokyo, I also know that Ban and Ginji are the only ones who stand a chance of getting it back!"

"Ah," Paul said, nodding as if he suddenly understood her reasoning after all. "You're right about that. Ban and Ginji are the only ones who can get that file away from Dr. Jackal and Lady Poison before it gets to the buyers."

"The only problem is," Hevn suddenly broke out in a wail, "They're going to kill me for not telling them!"

_Continued in Chapter 5. Now that everyone's finally on board for the ride, the real fun begins! _


	6. part 1 chapter 5

**All Possible Worlds, Part ****1****: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing**

**Chapter 5 of 8**

Author: _Tsutsuji_

Rating: PG13

Warnings: A little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)

_AN: Okay, I had a lot of fun writing this chapter - please, someone tell me if it's fun to read or if it's not!! _

Chapter Summary: It's round one of Bakura vs the Transporters!

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 5**

Ryou couldn't tell if Bakura was following a plan or a trail that he couldn't see, or perhaps just trusting a natural born instinct for finding trouble, but he followed along beside his Other Half through the crowded streets without another question. Shinjuku was just coming to life, the streets growing brighter as the sky overhead filled with darkness.

Sometimes as they crossed streets between blocks of shops, clubs and restaurants, Ryou caught another glimpse of the dark towers, but at other times he couldn't find them even though he knew they must be there. He began to feel as if they were a ghostly presence over the city that could only be seen from certain angles, or perhaps, with a special trick of sight. In spite of the fact that they were heading in a general direction towards them, they never seemed to get any closer.

Nearer at hand, the noise of traffic and voices filled the streets, punctuated with the beat and jangle of music from the clubs and game arcades they passed. Even with the urgency of their quest, Ryou couldn't help but feel drawn to the flashing signs outside the arcades, and the enticing displays for games he'd love to try. He soon caught Bakura gazing at them as well. When they passed a window displaying new and rare Duel Monsters cards, they both gave up any pretense of disinterest and stopped to stare.

"Too bad we don't have time for a little browsing," Bakura said. "When this is over and we've got those files, I'm definitely coming back here to get some of these."

"Ah, so that's why you insisted we bring all the credit cards," Ryou said, mildly sarcastic, although he'd already picked out the cards he'd like to buy when they had the time.

"Of course not!" Bakura said with a wave of his hand. "Those are for dinner and a hotel afterwards, to celebrate. Who said anything about 'shopping'?"

He gave Ryou a sly grin. Of course, Ryou thought with a long-suffering sigh. It wasn't particularly easy or fun to "steal" a hotel room or a nice meal in a restaurant (though gods knew Bakura had tried both), but trading game cards were a different story.

"You can't -" he began, turning on Bakura impatiently, but stopped short. This wasn't the time or place to get into an argument over Bakura's thieving habit; someone could easily overhear them. He clapped his hand over his mouth and glanced around in a guilty panic.

To his relief, no one seemed to pay them any attention. In fact, everyone around them was busy pushing through the crowd or talking with friends as they hurried along, or staring dazzedly at the sights - all except for two young men who stood gazing at the window of the cafe next to the game shop, with the same indecisive longing he and Bakura had been giving to the cards. They even seemed to be having a similar argument, judging from the long-suffering look on the younger one's face.

"Yes, yes, I know we have enough in the expense account for dinner _and_ dessert," the boy said, "But we don't have time for both, Tsuzuki! We've got an assignment, remember? Make up your mind, already."

The sulky-sounding blond appeared to be no more than Ryou's age, but his older companion had the frantic look of an eager child overwhelmed with too many choices of treats. Following his gaze along the street, Ryou could see why; there was just about every kind of fare available in the block of restaurants ahead.

That made Ryou noticed that he was getting hungry again, too; their early supper had been hours ago now, and the delicious aromas wafting out from restaurants, cafes and food stalls filled the streets. He watched with a little envy while the man spun around, coat tails flapping as he finally made his decision. With a look of weary patience, the boy followed him into the seafood restaurant across the street.

"I suppose we don't have time to eat again right now, either," he said wistfully.

"Well, now that you mention it," Bakura said, following his gaze up the street.

Ryou wasn't sure which of them spotted it first; neither said anything, but there was a feeling like a shout of triumph in the mental link they shared, and any thought of food was forgotten. A block away, just around the corner on a side street, there was the motorcycle with the sidecar that had nearly run them down at Shion University that morning. It was parked by the curb; its owners were nowhere in sight.

"Well, well. This makes things a little easier," Bakura said.

Ryou didn't see how. The driver and her passenger could be in any of the restaurants or clubs along the street, and there were even more possibilities among all the criss-crossing side streets. Not only that, but he couldn't imagine how they were going to get the files away from them easily in a place like this without drawing a lot of attention to themselves, especially if Bakura whipped out his cards. Besides that, if the Transporters were as dedicated and dangerous as Bakura seemed to think they were, there was far too great a chance of getting a lot of innocent, unwary people involved.

"I suppose it's too much to hope that the left the file here while they went to dinner," he muttered as they approached the bike.

"Idiot," Bakura said, more teasing than annoyed. "That would be far too easy!"

"Just tell me you're not actually looking forward to meeting up with them," Ryou said, remembering how much Bakura had seemed to enjoy his brief battles with Shego back in Drakken's lab - even though each one ended in his undignified defeat.

"I admit, I'm a little curious, but I'm much more concerned with getting the file away from them before anyone else gets it."

They strolled up to the bike as casually as they could manage. Bakura glanced around briefly, Ryou took a much more nervous and thorough look up and down the street before they leaned over to inspect it. The driver's helmet was strapped to the seat. The sidecar was empty.

"How do we know they haven't already passed it on to whoever wants it?" Ryou asked.

"I doubt they've had time, but we'll just have to find that out when we find the Transporters."

"Oh? And precisely how do you intend to find that out?"

The silky, soft voice seemed to drift out of nowhere, making Ryou's skin crawl almost before it registered on his hearing.

When he thought about it, Ryou decided it was just the kind of voice he'd expect to come from a man called Dr. Jackal. The Transporter seemed to detach himself from a shadow around the corner of the side street. Remembering the blurred glimpse of him speeding by in the sidecar, Ryou immediately recognized the wide-brimmed hat and flying strands of dark hair, a flash of narrowed eyes and a strange smile. He really was as tall, thin and angular as he'd looked when Ryou had glimpsed him squeezed uncomfortably into the little sidecar. Ryou recalled how he'd appeared as gleeful as a kid on an wild carnival ride - until he'd caught a glimpse of them, and then, Ryou remembered, his expression had changed somehow. Somehow, he didn't think it was a good sign that Dr. Jackal's eerie smile was even wider now.

"Too bad we didn't know what you were after when I almost ran you down earlier," another voice added, as the driver of the bike stepped out up to join him. "We could have settled this then, so you wouldn't have had to waste your time following us all the way to Shinjuku."

"Yes, that is a shame," Bakura said smoothly. "We could have saved you the trouble of coming here at all!"

"I'm somewhat impressed," Dr Jackal said, lifting the brim of his hat to gaze at each of them. "The fact that you were able to find us makes me hope this job might become a little interesting after all."

"I guess it depends on what you mean by 'interesting'," Bakura returned.

From the way he'd said the word, Ryou was fairly certain he didn't want to know what Jackal meant, but he knew Bakura well enough to guess that they were all going to find out soon.

"Just out of curiosity," Bakura said, "Before things get too interesting, I assume you do still have the file in question?"

"Ah! Is this the item you're concerned about?" Jackal asked politely.

He held up a thin case, the kind Ryou had seen couriers carry between offices in downtown Domino. Bakura took a step forward, and Lady Poison did the same. Dr. Jackal smiled.

"Who are you two, anyway?" Lady Poison asked. "I thought you were a couple students at the University, but I guess that's not true, is it?"

"Certainly not," Bakura said. "We were only there at the university to retrieve Dr. Satomi's files, the same as you were. If we hadn't been delayed catching up on the local gossip, we would have gotten them first, before that idiot of a graduate student even had a chance to give them to you."

"Oh, is that so? Well, I don't know why you want this," Lady Poison said, "But whoever you are, you obviously don't know much about anything if you think you can take those files away from Dr. Jackal and Lady Poison!"

"But you are certainly most welcome to try," Dr Jackal said. His smile and his voice were a terrible invitation which Bakura seemed all too anxious to accept.

"Please!" Ryou burst out. "I'm very sorry if we're interfering with your job, but please - we really need to see those files! If only you could let us look at them for a moment?"

He didn't know what good it would do but he had to say something, if there was a chance of getting the files without anyone getting hurt. The side street they'd entered was dark and empty; he knew they were as good as invisible to the people passing by on the lighted main street. He'd been worried about attracting attention, now he was wishing someone would notice and put a stop to all this before it began.

"Don't bother, _Yadonushi,_" Bakura said softly. "These two aren't going to care about why we need that information - am I correct?"

"Perfectly," Akabane said, as cheerful as if Bakura had just offered him free dessert.

"We're professionals," Lady Poison said. "We were hired to do a job, and we do it, no matter what. You don't want to get in our way!"

She had taken a few steps to the side and Ryou now noticed that she held something in her hand. He realized that what he had taken for some kind of ornamental clasp on her shoulder was actually a set of tiny vials.

_Poison!_ Ryou thought frantically. "Bakura!" he warned in an urgent whisper.

At the same time, he realized that Bakura had already slipped a card from his deck. Lady Poison hadn't noticed, but Jackal's eyes flickered to Bakura's hand. Alarmingly, his smile only grew wider.

"Oh? It appears you really do intend to try, don't you?" he said softly. "I'm sure you have your reasons..."

Jackal raised his free hand slowly, it seemed to Ryou, or maybe time had slowed down as he watched, helpless to stop the flow of the inevitable.

_Get the case when I tell you, and don't fear! This will be all over soon,_ Bakura's voice came into his mind. It was almost reassuring.

They were like a mirror image of each other. Bakura flicked a trio of cards into the air and Jackal, at the same moment, flicked - Ryou yelped in shock - a trio of thin, glittering blades.

"Duck!" Bakura shouted, both out loud and in his mind, which was hardly necessary since Ryou was already face-flat on the pavement. Bakura dove to the side and landed almost on top of him. Half of Ryou's mind babbled insistently that it was against the rules of Duel Monsters to play three attack cards at once on the first turn, while the rest screamed _where did those knives come from!_ as the blades flew over his head, close enough for him to hear the air hiss when they passed.

Glancing up out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lady Poison with her thumb poised to pry off the tiny stopper on the vial in her hand. She hadn't released it yet, however, and seemed to be watching what Jackal did, perhaps waiting to see if the two of them survived his first attack. _How nice of her to hold back while her partner takes the first turn at killing us_, he thought in a babbling mental panic. _Thank goodness for professional courtesy_.

Lady Poison gasped and stepped back, eyes opening wide. Ryou held his breath, but her thumb didn't pop the cork off the vial. He wondered why she hesitated, and then he heard a hoarse, feminine shout that couldn't possibly have come from either of the Transporters.

He raised his head to look up cautiously. In his panic over the unexpected appearance of the knives, he'd forgotten about Bakura's cards. Now he realized that the Ring that was pressed into the dirt underneath him was tingling sharply against his skin. Between Bakura and Akabane, a woman in armor of leather and silver now stood poised for battle, holding up a raised sword that crackled with energy.

"Allow me to introduce the Unfriendly Amazon!" Bakura cried. _[Unfriendly Amazon: Warrior, ATK 2000, DEF 1000_ - Ryou's mind supplied the card's normal statistics out of habit - and _[Lightning Blade, increases the attack of any warrior card by 800_."When she's equipped with her Blade of Lightning, she gains even more power! She's more than a match for the blades of Dr. Jackal!"

"Oh?" Dr Jackal said. "How interesting!"

"Where the hell did she come from?" Lady Poison yelled.

"Does it matter? The question is, how much of a challenge is she going to be?" Dr Jackal tipped back the brim of his hat and looked up at the the Amazon, who was several inches taller than him and appeared to be quite a bit broader in the biceps and thighs.

"Since you asked," Bakura said happily, "Amazon, attack Dr. Jackal!"

With a yell, the warrior did as he commanded. The lightning sword slashed through the air. It seemed to Ryou that Jackal's eyes followed the arc of the blade in fascination, but an instant before it would have sliced his head from his shoulders, he leapt backwards, as fluid as a shadow. At the same time, half a dozen silver knives blossomed from his hands and shot towards the Amazon. She snarled and swiped at them with her sword but she couldn't deflect all of them. Four flew aside, but two got past her sword and hit her straight on in the chest.

Ryou saw Jackal's eyes gleam like violet shards in the glare as the Duel Monster exploded in a shower of white energy. Lady Poison gasped.

The Ring hummed against Ryou's chest. Bakura was already tossing out another card.

"Not bad!" he cried. "Let's see how well you do against my old friend, the Earl of Demise!"

"What the hell!" Lady Poison roared as the hunch-backed Earl materialized where the card had flown into the air. "Akabane, where are those things coming from? They must be some kind of holograms..."

Jackal regarded the Earl with interest. "I think not, Himiko-san," he said thoughtfully. "But in any case..."

He raised his free hand, fingers spread out, in front of his face; Ryou saw that the other hand still held the case at his side, casually keeping it out of harm's way. Suddenly, somehow, four more of those thin knives appeared in his hand, poised between his knuckles ready to be thrown, as if he'd conjured them from the same mystical place from which Bakura's duel monsters appeared.

How was all this blade-tossing and card-battling supposed to help him get hold of that case, Ryou wondered. The Transporters were surprised by Bakura's Shadow Magic, but not distracted enough to lose track of the precious files. In fact, Dr Jackal looked as if he was just waiting for the next creature to appear.

_Patience, Ryou_, Bakura answered his thought. _The mere appearance of monsters from the Shadow Realm was enough to put the likes of Dr. Drakken at a disadvantage, but these two are far too experienced to be distracted so simply. This is just the beginning of my strategy. _

Ryou allowed himself to be reassured, but knowing all too well how convoluted Bakura's dueling strategies could be, he wasn't about to relax yet. This game was far from over.

_Continued in Chapter 6_


	7. part 1 chapter 6

**All Possible Worlds, Part ****1****: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing**

**Chapter 6 of 8**

Author: _Tsutsuji_

Rating: PG13

Warnings: A little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)

Chapter Summary: Bakura's strategy pays off, with a little random help from Ryou.

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 6**

Partly in an effort to calm and distract himself, and partly out of old habit, Ryou began to imagine the battle unfolding before him as if it was one of the duels he used to watch from the sidelines with Jonouchi and Anzu and Honda, when his main contribution to the action was his knowledgeable commentary. If he could explain to himself what Bakura was trying to do, it would help him know when he was supposed to act. The problem with following one of Bakura's strategies, however, was being able to tell if it was really working or not.

For example, Ryou noted, if this were an ordinary duel, Bakura would have lost a fair number of Life Points already when Dr. Jackal defeated the Unfriendly Amazon in attack mode - however, since this was a Game of Shadows (even if half the participants didn't know that), Bakura's typical strategy of sacrificing Life Points right and left meant that he was really sacrificing his own energy, and feeling it with every hit.

"I wish you'd come up with some better way to duel, _baka_," Ryou muttered.

Bakura, however, seemed perfectly confident, even though he had winced noticeably when the Amazon had gone up in sparks.

The Earl of Demise _[ATK 2000, DEF 700 _shuffled towards Himiko with an eerie, evil laugh. She shuddered and took a step backward. Ryou was a little disappointed in her; she didn't look the type to be put off by an ordinary zombie type fiend, even if she did appear a little bit prim. She obviously had neither a game strategy nor a perfume prepared to deal with a zombie appearing out of thin air, but she gathered her wits enough to stand her ground and scowl at the grunting, gurgly-laughing Earl.

"Well, if you're not a hologram, then how do you like this!" she yelled. To Ryou's surprise, instead of unleashing the poison in her vial, she leapt forward with a yell and aimed a swift, surprisingly powerful karate-kick at the poor, slow-moving Earl's head.

"Ugh!" Lady Poison yelled as she connected, and the Earl howled. Ryou winced. He hadn't been very pretty to begin with, or very sturdy apparently; he looked even less attractive with half of his face caved in by her boot.

She landed on her feet and crouched, panting, waiting to see how much damage she'd done. Disappointingly (for her anyway) the Earl didn't explode like the Amazon had done.

"Your Attack points must be too low," Ryou said before he caught himself.

Bakura chuckled. "Idiot, she's not a Duel Monster! And I'm sure she can do better than that!" Bakura said.

"Don't be so encouraging!" Ryou cried, as Lady Poison looked ready to take his words to heart and hit the Earl again, harder and faster.

"The question is, is it worth the trouble for Dr. Jackal and Lady Poison to do any better?" Jackal asked musingly.

"Allow me to answer that question for you with this!" Bakura cried, tossing out another card. "Worm Drake!"

_[AKT 1400, DEF 1500_, Ryou recited from memory. "_Once it wraps itself around you..."_

"There is no escape!" Bakura finished with a dramatic flourish.

Dr. Jackal's curiosity got the better of him; he had those blades in his hand but he watched the card burst to life with a fascinated gleam in his eye, and the next thing he knew the creature had shot out and wound itself around his body from shoulder to hip, pinning his arms to his sides and rendering his blades useless. He actually looked surprised and, for the first time, not entirely happy.

"Jackal!" Himiko shouted.

She sounded more shocked than anything else. Apparently her agile companion didn't get pinned down by sinuous snake monsters very often, Ryou thought.

Jackal wiggled his fingers at his sides, trying to get enough leverage to reach the Worm Drake's hide; for a second Ryou watched his long, gloved fingers dance and bend frantically, knife blades flashing between them like something in a conjurer's hand trick. For the first time, he realized the blades were actually scalpels.

"Oh, Dr. Jackal; I get it," he thought. He blushed, feeling a little foolish that he hadn't put that together before.

Then he saw that there were more blades than there had been a moment before, juggled expertly in those long fingers even though the hand was trapped past the wrist, even though Jackal himself could hardly move and gasped for breath. Where did they come from? Ryou didn't think he had them up his sleeve, since the Worm Drake had wound itself so tightly around his arm Ryou thought he could hear his bones creak. Either he was using magic to conjure them, or - he was pulling them from some place that Ryou didn't want to think about. Like inside his skin.

"We really should have just waited for that house to come back," he said wistfully.

Then he noticed something else: the case, the precious document case holding Dr. Satomi's files, was barely dangling from the trapped fingers of Jackal's other hand.

He glance over at Lady Poison. She was fully occupied with the Earl, who was slow but tough and persistent, and she barely had time to glance at her companion's predicament. Dr. Jackal couldn't possibly hold onto that case much longer. Bakura had told him to grab the files when he had the chance - or rather, when Bakura signaled him to, but Ryou couldn't see any reason to wait while Bakura played out one of his infamously convoluted strategy games.

He jumped up and moved. Cutting right across in front of Bakura, he dashed and started to dive toward the case.

At that moment, Himiko finally hit pay dirt. The Earl went down with a final groan and a flash. Bakura swore and made a swipe to grab Ryou, who yelped with the sudden alarming realization that this wasn't what Bakura had intended him to do just then after all.

"Oh, dear! Sorry!" Ryou cried, as Bakura caught him by the arm. His momentum pulled them both right into the middle of the space between the two Transporters.

And then he got much more sorry when Lady Poison finally saw her chance and popped the cork off that little bottle she'd been holding all this time. A fireball shot out of the tiny mouth of the jar; Ryou couldn't figure out how so much flame could've been stored up inside such a tiny bottle.

"No!" Bakura yelled as the inferno rushed toward them. He let go of Ryou's arm with a shove that sent Ryou went flying towards the far side of the alley. A wall of flame roared up to fill the space where he'd been a split second before. The only way he knew Bakura was still alive somewhere on the other side of it was from the sound of his voice shouting something, but he couldn't hear what it was over the roar of the flames.

Then the flames spun back on themselves, split by a sudden gust of hot wind. Like a pair of dragons changing direction in mid flight, half of the flames went shooting back toward Lady Poison, while the other half headed right for Dr. Jackal and the Worm Drake.

Just in time, Ryou thought, with that odd sense of detachment that nearly getting fried a moment ago could bring on. Jackal had managed to cut a few slices into the Worm Drake after all - in fact, there were scalpel blades sticking out of its snaky hide here and there, wavering like porcupine quills when it moved, and Ryou couldn't imagine how they'd gotten there from Jackal's trapped fingertips - and the Worm was beginning to unravel from the doctor's tall, thin form. On the other hand, he wasn't free yet, and that might have been just as well for him, because even though the Worm Drake held him so that he couldn't dive out of the way of the rush of flames, it also shielded him from the worst of the fiery blast.

He heard Bakura's triumphant declaration: "Your Flame Perfume activated my Trap Card, Gust, which has rendered your attack useless!"

The commentator in Ryou's head puzzled over that, because Gust should only destroy one magic card, or, in the case of a Shadow Game, one spell, but Lady Poison's poisons were chemical, not magic, weren't they? And the card's effect should simply dissipate the spell, not send its effect roaring backwards towards their opponents. Bakura was stretching the rules a little (not that that surprised him in the least).

He didn't bother to argue with his inner Duel Monsters expert; things were a little too interesting on the field at the moment. Ryou threw his hand up in front of his face to shield himself from the combined glare of the flames and the Worm Drake's sparkling disintegration. The wind that had blown the flames went out on a final great gust (naturally) that briefly fanned the flames. Dr. Jackal's great, long coat fanned out from him like flaming wings; Ryou saw his hands reach up. using the document case to shield his face. Each of the Transporters yelled, though they sounded more furious than anything else - Lady Poison in particular did not sound happy to have her flames thrown back at her.

When the flames died down, the Transporters looked across at each other grimly. The flames had seared away clothing and singed skin on each of them: Jackal's coat, most of his shirt and some of his trousers were gone. If it wasn't for the shield provided by the Worm Drake, Ryou thought with a slightly hysterical giggle, he'd be positively indecent by now. Lady Poison must have dodged the worst of it but her costume had become a little more revealing, as well. ([_Fanservice!_ the smug commentator in Ryou's mind announced. He blushed, mainly at his own inner geekiness for thinking of such a thing at a time like this; it had absolutely nothing to do with his sudden awareness of the expanse of pale, scarred skin and the lithe strength that must have been rippling beneath Jackal's voluminous coat all along, he insisted to himself. On the other hand, some of the heat in his face might have been inspired by the appreciative grin Bakura was giving Lady Poison, even though her costume hadn't left much to the imagination to begin with, Ryou thought irritably. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore both Bakura's reaction and his own. The commentator inside his head just laughed.)

It was a welcome distraction when Bakura threw two more cards into the space between the four of them. Dr. Jackal actually looked pleased, even eager, as the card materialized into another warrior woman; Lady Poison glowered at her and at the cloud like wisp that swirled into existence next to her.

"D.D. Warrior Lady," Ryou intoned automatically, "with 1500 Attack points." He was about to remark that she could be also Equipped with a powerful sword like Fusion Sword Murasame Blade for another 800 points, when his mind tripped up on wondering when Bakura had started using so many warrior cards.

Jackal looked more than willing to take on the Warrior Lady, but she immediately sprinted toward Lady Poison instead, who was ready with another vial.

"Sleep Perfume will stop you!" Lady Poison yelled gleefully. Except that it didn't. D.D. Warrior Lady barely slowed down, shaking her head as the fumes hit her but otherwise showing little sign of being affected. Ryou, on the other hand, felt about ready to drop at the mere idea of sleep, but at the same time he instinctively turned his head away and shielded his face, watching the battle between his fingers.

Lady Poison scowled furiously; she looked perfectly happy to take on the Warrior Lady in physical combat, but she was barehanded, and the Lady had a perfectly serviceable sword of her own even without the Equip card.

Jackal decided to act; apparently, as gentlemanly as he appeared, he thought nothing of going two-against-one against a woman, Ryou observed. This time, though, Ryou figured out Bakura's plan even before it started to unfold. Intent upon the attacking the Warrior, the Transporters chose to ignore the ghostly card-spirit winding through the air among them. Jackal barely paused and scowled when it flew right into the rain of scalpels he unleashed at the Warrior.

Bakura chuckled, which saved Ryou the bother of doing so himself. He was rather fond of Dark Spirit of the Silent, and was glad to see Bakura using one of his usual, favorite cards.

"Meet Dark Spirit of the Silent," Bakura said, just as Jackal's attention shifted to the ghost with a glare of alarm. "It possesses your attack, so to speak, so that I can take control of it and redirect it where I wish it to go - in this case, of course, that means sending your attacking weapons toward your own companion!"

Lady Poison dodged D.D. Warrior Lady's first lunge and swung around with yet another vial in her hand, looking a little frantic but not yet panicked - until she saw Dr Jackal's phalanx of blades change direction and swerve directly towards her. Jackal, Ryou noticed with a little interest, looked positively fierce. He clenched his fist, and the blades seemed to waver a little in the air but did not change course again.

"Oh, I see, he can direct them..." Ryou mused aloud as the commentator side of his mind took over, while the rest of him cowered in horror at this alarming revelation. He'd assumed Jackal was simply a practiced expert at thrown blades; well, who needed deadly accuracy if you could just tell the things where to go?

Apparently, though, whatever will or magic he used to control the blades was not quite as strong as Bakura's Shadow Magic. Not only did the blades stay on course for Lady Poison as she spun away from another attack from the Warrior Lady, but the Spirit guided them to follow her movement like a missile with a homing beacon.

Ryou heard a hiss and felt a breeze; it took him a second to realize it was from Dr. Jackal springing past him toward his companion. He passed by close enough that Ryou saw the dark violet gleam in his eyes.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ryou saw Bakura poised with two more cards between his fingers.

"_Be ready!_" The call came sharply into his mind.

"_You mean you really do have a plan?_" Ryou's sarcastic thought escaped before he could stop it, but Bakura only chuckled.

"_Yes, and it's about to come to completion. Move when I give you the signal, and not a moment sooner!_"

Ryou shook off all of his other concerns and watched closely. Jackal tackled Lady Poison an instant before his own blades reached her, and most of them missed - a few sliced through what was left of his clothes, and one grazed her thigh as they went down in the dirt. At the same time, he twisted around and threw another dozen blades up at D.D. Warrior Lady, who gasped, quite displeased, and then burst into a glowing cloud and disappeared.

"Damn!" Bakura shouted. Ryou jerked his head around; what had he just missed? Bakura had tossed one of the cards and held the other poised at his fingertips. What had gone wrong?

He understood when he saw the card trying to materialize; it was an equip card, and he must have meant it to attach itself to the Warrior Lady, but she was gone. He didn't know what it had been, but it was clear from the agitation in Bakura's mind that it was essential to the plan.

Without thinking, Ryou leap up and jumped into the space where the card was spinning in a magical vortex, trying to call forth the spirit it represented from the Shadow Realm. He heard Bakura gasp, felt him cry out in horror and admiration, as Ryou let the card possess him.

He knew at once what it was, the very essence of it filling his mind as its magical power infused his body. Snatch Steal, his mental commentator provided helpfully. Normally a card that takes control of an opponent's monster, but in this case, he understood that Bakura meant the "steal" part of the card's personality to be taken literally.

The card filled him with the focus, the speed and agility, of a master thief. In the time it took the two Transporters to gasp, he had pulled the document case from Dr. Jackal's grip and dashed away with it.

He only half heard Bakura's next cry as his final card flew towards the startled Transporters, but it fit into his mind so clearly he knew what it would be before he stopped short and turned around, clutching the case to his chest. The Snatch Steal left him with a whoosh of departing magic and his vision came back to normal focus. It was rather a sight worth seeing, there in the middle of the little side street: Dr. Jackal and Lady Poison scrambling to their feet, glaring in disbelief at the wide bars of the dome-shaped cage that had materialized around them.

"Nightmare's Steelcage," Ryou said aloud, almost calmly. "Excellent."

"That will hold even against your magic," Bakura said smugly. He stood back and shoved his deck into his back pocket. "Normally, it would remain in effect for two turns, but since this is a Shadow Game - and since I've got what I came for - it will simply remain in place long enough to keep you two from following after us. Don't worry, it will dissipate and return to the Shadow Realm of its own accord in a little while, as long as I'm not here to recast the spell! Meanwhile, I believe Ryou and I have other matters to attend to..."

He turned his back on them and took Ryou's arm. Ryou lifted his hand so that the case dangled between them. Bakura smiled; Ryou looked at it in wonder.

"What on earth did you just do?" he asked himself breathlessly, exhilarated but alarmed. Now he could feel how fast and hard his heart was racing, and how badly his legs shook. Funny that he hadn't noticed any of those things a moment ago.

"Shall we go?" Bakura said in a low voice. "The Nightmare's Steelcage will only hold them for fifteen minutes or so, but that should be long enough to lose them. They're Transporters, but not trackers, so we should be perfectly safe as long as we put some distance between us before they're free."

Ryou nodded, allowing himself to believe the casual assessment of the Transporters' abilities. Bakura, he noticed with the same observant part of his mind that had been watching the duel from the sidelines, sounded breathless, and held onto his arm almost as if to steady himself. He tried to add up how many Life Points that battle would have cost Bakura in a normal duel, but his inner game geek sputtered into silence as they stepped back out into the lighted, lively street - out of the Shadow Game and back into the normal world.

Behind them, he could hear Lady Poison shout. They turned for a final glance, and found (as Ryou expected) that the Transporters were bringing their powers to bear on the Nightmare's Steelcage with predictable results. Dr. Jackal's blades simply dissolved when they hit the the bars; he winced and hissed unhappily and didn't try that again. Whatever the noxious cloud was that Lady Poison was releasing this time, it also fizzled out when it reached the magical barrier of the dome shaped cage.

"Well, if Corrosion Perfume doesn't work on this thing," Lady Poison said grimly, aiming her glare at him and Bakura instead, "let's see what _this_ does!

The smile on Bakura's face turned to shock, and the rule-minded commentator in Ryou's head yelped indignantly. She uncorked another little bottle, and blew on the fumes to direct them through the space between the bars. It shouldn't have worked, but the faintly visible cloud came wafting towards them.

"Oh?" Dr Jackal followed its progress with interest, even though, to Ryou's relief, the cloud didn't have much energy. They backed a few steps away, and all he got was the faintest whiff of something sweet that, for some reason, reminded him of bananas. Bakura yanked him backward and fanned his hands at the cloud, and it paused listlessly before fading out of sight.

However, something glinted inside of the vague mist just before it disappeared. Ryou hardly had time to realize what it was before Bakura yanked him again, back and down and to the side all at once. A soft whooshing sound passed his ears, and Bakura hissed angrily and scuttled backwards around the corner, dragging Ryou with him.

"That should not be possible!" he growled through clenched teeth.

Ryou agreed, even before he saw what Bakura was glaring at: a surgically precise line of red that had suddenly appeared on his shoulder.

"It's supposed to stop all attacks!" Ryou gasped, and then immediately felt like an idiot for babbling about rules that obviously didn't apply to the case at hand.

"Yes, it should," Bakura said grimly.

He prodded apart the neat slice in his shirt sleeve and stared down at the barely-visible cut. The blade had just grazed his arm; Ryou was relieved to see that the wound wasn't deep.

"Interesting, isn't it?" Bakura said casually, while he watched the tiny beads of blood slowly appear along the line. "I've never actually used Shadow Magic against other kinds of magic before. I guess the results were bound to be a little unpredictable."

"What if the Steelcage doesn't hold them, then?" Ryou cried. The panic he'd managed not to notice all along finally took hold. He peered cautiously toward, but not around, the corner of the building that now hid the Transporters from sight.

"It only has to hold them long enough for us to get lost in this crowd," Bakura declared. "Let's go!"

Ryou didn't argue. In fact, if he'd had any idea where they were going, he would've led the way away from there as fast as his shaking legs would carry him.

After some fifteen breathless minutes of nearly running with the document case clenched tightly in his fist, they slowed down a little, and Ryou did consider asking Bakura if he knew where they were going now. When he turned to him, though, his eye was caught by that shocking red streak across Bakura's shoulder. He glanced around quickly for any others, wondering what had happened to the other blades that had flown by them. He had a feeling Dr. Jackal didn't just leave them lying around, but he stopped short of trying to imagine how he got them back where they came from.

"Are you all right?" he asked Bakura instead of worrying about where they were going.

"I'm fine, and quite exhilarated! That was the most entertaining duel I've had the opportunity to play in ages. However," he added, suddenly turning on Ryou with a scolding tone he'd never used before, "I was quite alarmed when you decided to make yourself a player! If it wasn't for the Millennium Ring you're wearing, that might well have been disastrous for you!"

"Why?" Ryou asked automatically. He couldn't quite feel worried now or regret what he'd done, in spite of the way Bakura was glaring at him for doing it. "I don't even know what made me think of doing that, but it worked perfectly."

"Yes, but remember, that was a Game of Shadows. An ordinary mortal, unprotected by the magic of a Millennium Item, would have been completely possessed by Snatch Steal, and then dragged back into the Shadow Realm with it when the turn ended."

Bakura turned away and, to Ryou's surprise, he shuddered. "You hardly remember the time you were forced to spend in that place after our duel with Marik's evil side, but believe me, it is not something you should be in any hurry to experience again."

Ryou blinked slowly. He thought he remembered the horror of that time, but he still couldn't feel as frightened as Bakura's words and tone seemed to suggest he should. All that came back to him was a vague sense of being lost, and then found; where he knew there should logically be the memory of a nightmare, he discovered there was only a feeling of being sheltered and protected.

He thought about that time some more as they walked quickly through the streets, winding this way and that, following a random path among the high rises of the Shinjuku district. There was, he remembered, a definite sense of needing to be protected from _something _in that place, although he couldn't recall exactly what. But there was a wall around the memories, one he guessed he'd erected for himself, as if he knew better than to look too closely. Still, his lasting impression was that the Shadow Realm was not nearly as dark and horrible as it should have been.

He looked at Bakura as they walked. His Other Self stared ahead, eyes darting from side to side as he picked their way through the crowd with the instinct of a thief avoiding capture. Ryou trusted him completely in leading them to safety, and in so much more. A thief who had once seemed intent on the destruction of the world, he reminded himself. When had all that changed? He'd wondered about that before, but thinking back on that time after the duel with Marik, he thought he might know the moment it had happened, if he allowed himself to remember it. Better not to, something inside his heart said. All that mattered now was the present and the future, and the future might just depend on what was inside this case he carried.

_Continued in Chapter 7_


	8. part 1 chapter 7

**All Possible Worlds, Part 1; chapter 7 of 8: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing!**

Author: _Tsutsuji_

Rating: PG13

Warnings: A little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)

Chapter Summary: Old friends and adversaries meet again, and it's Bakura vs the Transporters, round 2!

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 7**

Himiko stared out through the bars of the steel dome, still wondering how the hell it had materialized so solidly around them, and how long it would take to disappear - if their crazy, white-haired opponent was telling the truth, that is. If he wasn't, she didn't know how they were going to get out of something that even Dr. Jackal's blades couldn't cut and her perfumes didn't affect. If this was magic, it was not like any she'd seen before.

She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end before she saw the flutter of white in the darkness. Without knowing why, she yelled a warning and tried to push Akabane back from the bars of the cage, but he had already leapt away from them as well. She thought she heard Dr. Jackal swear nervously under his breath, which shocked her even more than anything else she'd seen so far.

The strip of paper flew up and clung to the bars for a moment, fluttering like an aggressive butterfly. Somehow Himiko could sense the battle between the two magics, but it only lasted for a heartbeat. The _fuda_ burst into flame that consumed the cage; both bars and paper dissolved into dust and shadow, leaving nothing but the ozone-sweet tang of magic in the air.

She was a little relieved to see that Jackal was smiling again. That shouldn't bode well for the two men walking toward them, but her hair stood on end again. She'd never seen them before; they looked perfectly ordinary, but there was something entirely unnatural about them.

"My, my, Kuroudou-san!" the taller man smiled. "I never expected to see you caught in a magical trap! And no bodies lying on the ground, no blood soaking the pavement - does that mean we were called here prematurely?"

Himiko had to remind herself that this man was probably an enemy and almost certainly not an ordinary human. With his smile and his unruly brown hair and intriguing, violet-colored eyes, he was one of the most beautiful men she'd ever seen. He was also one of the very few people she'd ever known to call Dr. Jackal by his given name, and that as much as the strange aura around him made her wary.

"Ah, Asato Tsuzuki-san! What a surprise! I see you have yet another new partner," Akabane said smoothly. "That makes, let's see, how many since we first met?"

"Tsuzuki?" the partner in question said, obviously baffled by this familiar exchange. Himiko felt equally astonished, if not more so.

"Hisoka, meet Kuroudou Akabane, also known as Dr. Jackal," the violet-eyed man said. "They say he has his own index in the _Kiseki_, he's sent so many souls to the Afterlife. It looks like a false alarm this time, though, doesn't it!"

Hisoka stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

It was Tsuzuki's turn to look puzzled. Himiko could do nothing more than listen to all of this, speechless.

"The reason Chief Konoe sent us here to Shinjuku, of course," Tsuzuki shook his head with a little roll of his eyes. "Didn't he explain? It's happened before. Kuroudou-san gets a little carried away sometimes, and for some reason the Shinigami for this district don't like to deal with him. So they send me." He spread his hands and shrugged with a grin that clearly said _it's embarrassing but what else can you do?_ His partner's expression sent another message entirely.

"_Baka_!" Hisoka cried. "These guys have nothing to do with it! We're not here because of anything in the Kiseki! We're just here to find - a file." He caught himself and hesitated, but then he frowned and pushed on as if he'd said too much to stop now.

"It's one of Dr. Satomi's files, Tsuzuki," he said in a much lower voice; if Himiko didn't know what he was talking about already, she wouldn't have been able to make out the name he mentioned. "The Chief didn't want to send anyone else because - well, because of what's in the file."

He stared hard at Tsuzuki, obviously determined not to spell everything out for him, with a quick scowl at herself and Jackal. Clearly he wished they were further out of earshot, but Himiko didn't bother to pretend she wasn't listening to every word. Tsuzuki stared back at his partner and Himiko saw something in his expression change; the smile disappeared and the light in his eyes went dim. Hisoka winced as if the sudden lack of expression on his partner's face hit him like a physical force.

"Satomi..." Tsuzuki said softly. "That man ... the one Muraki was working with."

"You know Muraki killed him," Hisoka muttered quickly, "but he left behind information on the research they were doing. Someone stole the information and brought it here to Tokyo. Chief Konoe sent us to get it back. We're not here to summon any souls for judgment or track down any unusual deaths, this time."

Himiko watched and listened with her mind starting to reel. Summoning souls to judgment? _Shinigami_? She shuddered with the realization. That would explain the strange aura she sensed from them. It gave her little clue to their powers, though, and it didn't explain why they were so interested in this file they were transporting to an unknown client. She saw Akabane's smile twitch as he listened in as well.

"Is this interesting enough for you now, Dr. Jackal?" she said, bitingly.

"Oh, it's become quite interesting. In fact, this makes it even more unfortunate that those other two were able to get away with the file - doesn't it, Tsuzuki-san? They were fairly entertaining after all, but we could have had so much more fun if you'd gotten here first! I wonder if your new partner is as powerful as you are? That would have made our battle for possession of the file in question so entertaining!"

"What," Hisoka gasped. He turned to stare directly at them for the first time.

Tsuzuki blinked in surprise. The baffled, slightly hurt look on his face was almost comical. "Kuroudo-san!"

"You two have Satomi's file?" Hisoka gasped. "You're the couriers the Chief mentioned! But, wait - the he someone else was interested in them too. Are you saying you two had them, but you _lost_ them?"

"Unfortunately, but it's only a matter of time before we find them and get them back," Akabane said calmly. "Our anonymous client is apparently very interested in Dr. Satomi's research, for some reason...and so, it seems, are these others, whom I believe have a rather more personal motivation."

Akabane and Tsuzuki stared at each other, speculative and challenging. To Hisoka's obvious distress and Himiko's relief , Tsuzuki backed down first with a sigh.

"Akabane-san," he said quietly. "I hate to call in a favor on an old friend, but it would make us more than even if you help us get those files back from whoever stole them from you. "

"Hmm..." Akabane cocked his head to the side, thinking about it.

Himiko couldn't believe this. It was hard enough to imagine Dr. Jackal owing a favor to anyone, but to an old friend who just happened to be a Shinigami - an angel of death? No matter who or what they were, though, she couldn't let these two interfere with the delivery.

"We have a job to do, Jackal," she reminded him. "And we're starting to run late. You're not planning to simply turn the files over to them?"

"Not 'simply,' Lady Poison." He gazed at Tsuzuki with that glitter he only got in his eyes when he saw a golden-red opportunity for what might be the ultimate challenge to his skill.

"Akabane-san," Tsuzuki sighed, looking weary and again, hurt. "I don't want to fight with you!"

"Maybe we should find the files first, and argue about it later?" Hisoka suggested impatiently. "Who took them from you, anyway? Some couriers you turned out to be..." He muttered under his breath.

Himiko fumed; she had a fine urge to choke the kid for that - if you _could_ choke a Shinigami, that is - but Jackal only smiled. That was one of the downsides to working with him, of which there were few; far from taking it personally if they were bested by an opponent, he only took on jobs in order to find worthy opponents, and on the rare occasions when he found someone who might be "interesting" enough, the job was likely to take a back seat to his interest in their enemy. This was turning into one of those times.

"Regretably, we didn't catch their names," Jackal said, "but it will be easy enough to track them down - isn't that right, Lady Poison? You placed your Tracking Perfume on the documents as well as the case, I trust?"

Himiko looked sidelong at the Shinigami, but nodded. "It won't take long to find them at all. They can't have gone far," she added.

Then again, she thought uncomfortably, with the magic they were using, they might have gone anywhere in the world - or some other world entirely, for all she knew.

* * *

Bakura let instinct guide him; even in an unfamiliar city, he knew a safe place to rest when he saw it. Ryou was so preoccupied and weary after the adrenaline of the battle wore off that he didn't object when Bakura simply said "Here," and stopped. He also didn't object in the least when Bakura handed him some rice cakes from his jacket pocket. Ryou fished in his backpack for a couple of the juice cartons he'd brought along and handed one to Bakura. After their trip to America and encounter with Drakken, they'd learned to keep a few things on hand in case of unexpected hold ups and missed meals. 

They were sitting in a little park, on a bench that was shadowed by a bank of rhododendron bushes, just out of the glare of the overhead lights. There was enough light, though, for them to read the printed pages in Dr. Satomi's files. Ryou leaned against him, reading over his shoulder and shivering a little until Bakura put his arm around him and pulled him closer.

Bakura frowned as frustration set in. He could see the writing perfectly well, but most of the words didn't make much sense to his mind. _What's all this crap?_ he griped through his mental link with Ryou, hoping to hear something that made sense in Ryou's thoughts.

"It's medical terminology, I guess," Ryou said, squinting at the pages full of laboratory reports and technical descriptions of procedures. "I can't tell for sure; anatomy and physiology isn't exactly my best subject, but it sounds like he _was_ actually trying to clone a human heart! That's what most of the terms I recognize refer to, anyway, although it mentions other organs as well."

They leaned over the pages together for some time, ignoring the occasional couple who wandered by, stared hopefully at the sheltered, secret bench for awhile, and then wandered away again in search of some other private place. Bakura spared the last of them a glare. That was the problem with private, secret resting places, he reflected - lovers always found them first. He couldn't blame them for trying. If he wasn't so busy trying to stay alive, he'd rather be doing what they wanted to do! Soon enough, he told himself, pulling Ryou closer.

Bakura read what he could and gleaned more from Ryou's hesitant thoughts, but two things became clear before long. For one thing, in spite of the rumors, there was nothing to indicate that Satomi had grown any more than individual human organs from the cells he cloned, and for another thing, he had not been satisfied with the results of his experiments. Everything he created, died.

Ryou sighed, leaning his head against Bakura's arm. "After all we've been through to get it, this isn't very much use to us after all, is it?"

"There must be more than this," Bakura muttered, shuffling through the sheets of paper. "He must have made some kind of progress. Why else would someone be interested enough in this crap to hire those two?"

He wasn't ready to give up on Satomi yet. Especially, he thought, shutting his mind away from Ryou's, after what he'd discovered in that battle with the Transporters. He let Ryou lean against him, knowing how worn out he must feel after the rush and tension of the entire day, but the truth was, he hardly felt any more energetic himself. Casting Shadow magic had never taken this much out of him before. He tried to convince himself it was only because of the unexpectedly different form of magical power, or whatever it should be called, that the Transporters had within themselves. He couldn't fathom the source of it for either of them, but something had been able to resist the effects of his Card Monsters much more effectively than he ever would have expected.

However, he knew that wasn't the entire reason he felt bone weary, nearly as weak as his host body used to be when he'd first awakened, after Ryou became the new owner of the Ring. He had his own magic, apart from what he could call upon from the dark power of the Ring, but he'd just discovered the hard way that it was limited by this body that wasn't truly his own. The body Drakken made, even though it was made from Ryou's resilient essence, did not have the stamina to channel and use such magic without damage. He'd have to remember not to piss Yuugi off too much, he thought irritably; this body would never survive a direct attack from a God Card!

However, he was already recovering his strength after the duel, restoring the Ba-energy that was represented by "Life Points" in the non-magical version of a Shadow Game. Unfortunately, his strength was returning far more slowly than he could remember it ever returning before, even after the intense battles he'd waged against the Yugi's Other Self and Marik's dark side. Then, his power had only been limited by the vulnerability of Ryou's' body, which he'd been able to augment with his own spiritual power and that of the Ring - although he had used less of the dark magic of the Millennium item and more of his own as time went on, as he had become attached to Ryou and less willing to expose him to the Ring's ultimate darkness.

Now, he could only call on the Ring's power through contact with Ryou, and he was still not willing to do so any more than absolutely necessary. He'd begun to turn away from that evil will the moment he'd made the decision to protect his host from mental and spiritual destruction when they were trapped together in the Shadow Realm, and he'd rejected it for good a short time later, when he'd been given a glimpse of a reality that might have been, if his own soul had not been lured so far into the darkness.

He wouldn't turn back to that now, even if it was the only thing that would keep this body alive. That meant he had to hold on to the hope that Satomi's research had found a way to create a cloned body that would live out a normal human life span. That, Bakura thought, was all he wanted now. He'd even give up all the magical power in the universe if he could just accomplish that: a normal life with Ryou.

But the research scientist's experiments all seemed to have ended in the same dead end. If the technical notes didn't make that clear enough, the personal journal they found among the medical records certainly did. Satomi had despaired of keeping a specimen alive any longer than a few days.

"Huh," Bakura grunted sarcastically. "What do you know; Drakken did a better job than this 'expert.' At least this body is supposed to last a few months, not just days!"

"Bakura," Ryou said sadly. "Look, there's still more... there must be something here..."

They read the last pages of the journal together. There _was_ something, it seemed, although they weren't sure what it meant at first. Satomi suddenly went off on a tangent about some new information he'd received from a former student...

Ryou sat up with a gasp, and Bakura stared more closely at the scrawled journal.

"Ah yes, I forgot about the mysterious associate who got all the students so excited," Bakura said with renewed interest. "Let's see what he had to say about all this..."

The notes, however, grew nearly incoherent after that. Satomi's student had apparently brought him information that seemed, at first, far too good to be true, and then, for some reason, the journal became filled with terror and regret.

"He's rambling," Bakura stated flatly as they scanned the final pages, scribbled so hastily they were hardly legible. "He went mad..."

"And committed suicide," Ryou said softly. "That's terrible."

Bakura supposed Ryou felt sad for the man, but he could only feel disgust and frustration. He didn't say it aloud, but he began to have an idea of how all those not-so-coincidental murders had happened after all, and he was more convinced than ever that Satomi hadn't killed himself, no matter how much of a failure he'd been. It made him wonder if the mysterious colleague was really the one here in Tokyo who wanted these files back so badly, after all.

Not that it mattered to him if he was. They pulled the final papers from the bottom of the case, although Bakura didn't really see the point. Satomi had failed in his research and then at life. It was time to think of looking elsewhere.

"Bakura," Ryou said wonderingly as he opened the final folder. "This is something different... Look!"

At first, Bakura couldn't see what Ryou thought was so different or so interesting about the remaining papers. They weren't in Satomi's handwriting or in the same printed form as his research notes; instead, they consisted of some brief, handwritten notes, with a few scribbled notations in a different handwriting, and a couple of colorless pictures of a bandaged man lying in a bed.

"What good are those," Bakura grumbled, puzzled by Ryou's rising interest.

"These are old!" Ryou exclaimed softly. "And strange... I don't think they knew about cloning back then... but look! This man stayed alive for years without - " he paused, swallowing, as he was overtaken by some shiver of emotion Bakura felt through their link but couldn't name. "That's terrible," was all Ryou said after that.

Bakura gave in and read the file, what he could decipher of it. It was indeed a gloomy story, and even if it was a strange one, Bakura couldn't see how it could help him any. So what if a man had somehow survived so many years without food and drink, without sleep, without aging? He was dead long ago, as the notes made quite clear. From the sound of it, he'd been only too anxious to leave life behind after existing like that for so long, anyway.

"Satomi must have thought this would give him the answer to keeping the cloned organs alive," Ryou said thoughtfully, as Bakura handed him the last of the old pages.

"And when he realized it was no use, he gave up," Bakura said flatly.

"I suppose so," Ryou said sadly. "But still... There must be something here. He was making progress; maybe if we learn more...someone who could stay alive like that for so long, it must be possible." He stared at the old photograph. "Does he look a little bit familiar?" Ryou wondered.

Bakura glanced over his shoulder one more time and shrugged. "How could he be? He's long gone from this world!" Besides, he thought, the sad face was hardly visible in that faded colorless picture, anyway.

Ryou trailed off, lost in his own thoughts. Bakura stuff the rest of Satomi's papers back in the case and closed it dismissively. He sat back, munching on rice cake, while Ryou got up and paced across the park, still staring down at the old papers and the photograph in his hand. Bakura allowed himself to wonder if it was possible, if there was any answer in those old files at all. Maybe there was...

He must have been part of Ryou too long, he thought with a little ironic smile at himself, if he could actually feel something like hope.

"I don't understand," Ryou said, with his head bowed so low his voice was muffled.

Bakura wondered what he was wondering about. Ryou's pale hair gleamed ghostly white in the deeper shadow at the edge of the park as he walked further away.

The back of Bakura's neck prickled. Ryou's steps looked jerky and stiff, hesitant, even though he kept walking away.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I don't know!" Ryou answered.

Bakura heard the note of panic in Ryou's voice at the same time he sensed the strange magic in the air. He jumped to his feet, but found to his horror that his weary body was still moving more slowly than usual. It only took a second, but Ryou was already out of sight among the bushes by the time he got to the edge of the park.

"Bakura! I can't stop!" Ryou's wail ended on a squeak of terror and then broke off into utter silence.

Bakura dove through the bushes toward the sound of his voice, and stopped, frozen in horror. Dr. Jackal held the sheath of papers, the old records from Satomi's file, rolled up in one gloved hand. His other hand held the tip of a scalpel blade at Ryou's throat.

It was clear that Ryou could not move, even if he'd wanted to - and Bakura was just as glad that he couldn't. Lady Poison stepped out of the shadows next to Jackal. Bakura caught a faint whiff of a scent in the air, which must have come from Lady Poison even though she didn't have a vial in her hand.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry..." Ryou chanted in a whisper, lips barely moving and eyes clenched shut.

_Harm him at your peril,_ the growled threat came to Bakura's mind, but he couldn't force the words past his dry lips. He knew exactly how sharp and quick those blades could be in Jackal's hand. By the time he pulled a card out of his pocket, Ryou's life would be pouring out of his throat onto the ground.

Bakura felt caught in an agony of helpless rage, more horrified than he could remember being since he was a child. He would plead or bargain anything to get Ryou away from that blade unharmed, and he knew it probably wouldn't matter.

"Do not harm him," he said finally. Neither a plea nor a warning, knowing both were useless, his voice only sounded flat.

Ryou whispered a plea of his own, but not for his own life. "Please - I'm sorry - I only wanted the information to keep him alive...I don't want to lose him."

"Ah," Jackal said softly, "Yes, I can imagine you would."

"Please," Ryou whispered.

Bakura didn't understand Akabane's comment. He only knew that if Ryou died under that blade, his last living act with this weak, cloned body would be to kill Dr. Jackal by any means possible.

_concluded in Chapter 8_


	9. part 1 chapter 8

**All Possible Worlds, Part ****1****: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing**

**Chapter 8 of 8**

Author: _Tsutsuji_

Rating: M (R) - I bumped it up only because of a _little_ bit stronger language in this chapter, just to be safe.

Warnings: Language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)

Chapter Summary: The Battle for the Files reaches a conclusion. Hey, what's a few little pieces of paper between, uh, friends, anyway?

**Something for Nothing, Chapter 8**

Ryou had handed the file to Akabane before he knew what he was doing. Now he could only stand still; barely able to move his lips to speak, he hardly dared to breath or think. He felt encased in a cloud that held his limbs and his mind frozen in time and space, and all he was aware of was the pin-prick sensation at his throat, and the slim curve of Dr. Jackal's lips, and how they both remained unmoved by his own whispered plea. He was hardly even aware of Bakura, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what Bakura was feeling or what he might do.

The park lit up like a flare, the air crackled, and someone broke through the cloud with a shout that made his heart jump.

_"Jackal__"_

Ryou figured it was Bakura. He was still confused by what he'd just done, and his brain felt so fuzzy that he wasn't even sure if the squeal of terror that followed the shout had really come from himself or not.

Then he realized that Lady Poison and Dr. Jackal had suddenly become engaged in another battle, but not with Bakura or his Duel Monsters. Jackal had become a dark blur; there was another blur of white and blue arcing across the park along with him. Lady Poison shouted in wordless fury at an opponent who seemed to be made entirely of crackling white lightning.

"What the hell?"

_That_ was Bakura, speaking right in his ear. Ryou realized his Other's arm was around his waist, and he sagged against Bakura gratefully.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help it I'm sorry I don't know why I'm sorry..." he began to pant into Bakura's shoulder.

"It's not your fault," Bakura growled, squeezing him tight. "One of her poisons must be a mind-control drug, and she probably tracked us with a scent as well. I should have expected something like that. But I certainly couldn't have expected this!"

Ryou looked up; Bakura was watching the Jackal spin, leap, dodge, attack, and dodge again, scalpel blades flashing like a rain of deadly ice. His hat had flown away, the remains of his tattered and singed coat trailed behind him like a shredded cloud. The strangely scarred skin of his chest and arms gleamed and rippled with his movements, his hair flew wild around his face, and his eyes were alight. Of course he was smiling, Dr. Jackal always seemed to be smiling, but there was something so much more alive in his face now that Ryou almost - _almost_ - felt happy for him.

He finally shook off the last effects of the mind-fuzzing perfume and realized what was going on. Jackal was fighting another man, who looked nearly as feral and determined and deadly as he was; white shirt tails flapped as he leaped around and swiped at Jackal with his fist, and blue eyes blazed bright enough to see even behind dark purple shaded glasses. Ryou was impressed that anyone dared or was able to get that close to the scalpel-wielding maniac, especially without any kind of weapon, using only his bare hands - but then he saw the other man's fist miss Jackal by a hair's width, and the half-foot thick steel post he grabbed with that bare hand instead crumpled like paper.

"That explains _that_," Ryou said to himself. He was very glad they weren't standing any closer.

Dr. Jackal laughed at this, clearly having the time of his life as he spun around to face his glaring opponent again. Apparently, Ryou thought, he had about as warped a sense of fun as Bakura had, only much, much more so.

Of course, through it all, Jackal never let go of that handful of papers.

"Damn it," Bakura swore through clenched teeth. "Who the hell are these guys?" He was thumbing through his deck in between glances at the fight - fights, Ryou corrected himself, as another flash of lightning lit the air. Lady Poison's new opponent seemed to be able to shoot rather large sparks from his hands. Ryou was alarmed, but hardly surprised, all things considered.

"If she keeps up with those moves," Bakura observed, "that costume of hers isn't going to hold out much longer."

Ryou was not surprised to catch him leering at the girl. Her clothes had faired only a little better than Jackal's in the backlash from her flame perfume attack earlier, one shoulder was bare, there was a rip across her torso on the other side, and her tight-fighting trousers had effectively become mini-shorts, but the fabric that was left was beginning to show more signs of strain at the seams.

"I hadn't noticed," Ryou said absently.

"I'm sure you didn't," Bakura replied.

The boy with the lightning in his fingertips danced around her, but he seemed to be annoying her more than anything else since he was obviously trying _not_ to fight with her. He looked happy, too, but Ryou realized with some amazement that he was not smiling because he was enjoying the battle, as the other two obviously were. He was trying his best to convince Lady Poison that they were all friends and shouldn't be fighting at all. Rather predictably, she was not buying it.

"They seem to know each other," Ryou said vaguely.

"Yes," Bakura agreed. "I have the distinct impression they do this kind of thing a lot."

Ryou opened his mouth to gasp in horror when he saw that Himiko, unbelievably, had sucked in a burst of flame, and then blew it out like a diabolical smoke ring at her happy-go-lucky blond opponent. The lightning bolt that burst from his fingertips only ignited the flame more brightly as it came rushing toward his face. Out of the corner of his eye at the same exact second, Ryou saw the blue-eyed man spin around a little too quickly. He was face-to-point with one of Jackal's knives.

In the second between drawing the breath and letting out the gasp, Ryou felt everything slam to a halt with a blast of magical energy more intense than anything he had ever felt during a Game of Shadows. He heard a shout, an ordinary vocal yell from a young voice - like the cry of a samurai, Ryou thought unexpectedly; on another level, there was an unheard vibration that even seemed to waver through the Millennium Ring. He thought he saw, or felt, Bakura wince. That would have alarmed him into panic and fury if he hadn't been so immediately distracted by what happened next.

Himiko's firestorm vanished like a whiff of steam, and what appeared to Ryou's eyes to be a flock of tiny white paper birds fluttered around where the flames had been, before they too sparkled out of sight. When the shimmering of that magic disappeared, Ryou realized there was another man standing just beyond the Transporter and her lightning-laced opponent, standing quite still with his long gray trench coat fluttering lightly around his legs. He seemed perfectly calm, as if he was meditating with his hands poised in a spiritual gesture, but his eyes were bright and his gaze was pinned on the space between the two fighters.

Almost more bizarre than that was the boy who had suddenly materialized in between Jackal and his blue-eyed would-be victim. He was no more than Ryou's age, fair and blond and fragile looking, but with fierce green eyes. The scalpel blade had come to a halt barely an inch away from the other man's face, but that was as far as even Dr Jackal could reach over the_bokken_ the boy had thrust between the two men.

Ryou's mind spun; why did they look so familiar? Then he remembered. They were the same two men he'd seen arguing over dinner and dessert in the street earlier.

"What's this?" Bakura hissed, squeezing Ryou more tightly against his side. Ryou almost did panic, then; if these two newcomers made Bakura nervous, something very bad must be about to happen.

However, nothing else at all happened right away. Instead, the Transporters drew back, each with a little frustrated "huff" as if all their fun had been spoiled, but Jackal, who seemed to live for such "fun," was still smiling, while Himiko looked furious.

"Don't get in our way!" she shouted, although whether she was trying to warn the ones they'd been fighting or the newcomers wasn't clear. None of them seemed very impressed, which, Ryou guessed, must have frustrated her even more than she already was.

The boy who had blocked Dr. Jackal from his almost-certain kill pushed Jackal back with the tip of the wooden sword at his breastbone. Jackal fairly danced away backward; the blades in his hand disappeared, but he swung the file - oh, yes, the file! Ryou thought, suddenly remembering what this was all about in the first place - out of reach as the boy made a grab for it.

"Hisoka," the man in the trench coat said in a mildly warning tone, at which his younger companion scowled, but the tip of the wooden sword dropped a little further until it no longer appeared as a direct challenge to the Transporter.

"Those files," the boy began, scowling at the sheath of papers in Jackal's hand even more darkly than he'd scowled at the man holding them.

"Don't give it to them, Dr. Jackal!" Lady Poison commanded. "We got them back without any of your help, and we're going to deliver them to our client, without fail!"

She spun away from her bewildered looking opponent and leaped over to stand near her companion Transporter. The blue-eyed man moved to put himself between them, and Jackal moved a step away from both of them.

"Who the hell are you guys?" the blue-eyed man said to the newcomers in a casual way, as if he was no more than mildly annoyed at the interruption. "Don't tell me Hevn-san double-booked another Retrieval service!"

At the same time, in spite of his tone, he pushed his dark glasses down and peered over them at the newcomers, studying them with a wary look in his eyes. Considering the power they'd displayed, Ryou thought wariness was definitely called for. However, his companion didn't seem to know the meaning of the word "wary."

"Ban-chan, she wouldn't do that to us!" He turned to the man with the trench coat with a broad, friendly smile, as if they'd just met over drinks with mutual friends. Then he gave the same grin to the other boy, who scowled back with a look that was most definitely not friendly.

"We're the GetBackers: that's Ban-chan, and I'm Ginji," the lightning user explained, as if that would clear up everything for everyone. "We were hired to get that file back for the client, so that's what we have to do, you see!"

He laughed. As simple as that, Ryou thought, astounded. Bakura looked dumbstruck, but then his eyes narrowed.

"He actually means that," Bakura said, and looking again, Ryou could see it too. Beneath the goofy grin, the blond was every bit as determined to get that file as the Transporters were to keep it.

He watched the others react; Lady Poison sighed as if this was all too familiar; Jackal grinned.

"How perfectly like you, Ginji-kun," he said, and he actually giggled.

"But you're not getting this file back," Himiko added quickly. "We were hired to do a job as well, you know."

"Himiko," said the man called "Ban-chan" - even though he appeared to be possibly the oldest of the group (aside from Bakura, who didn't look his real age of 5000 years anyway). He sounded weary yet determined, as if he knew this conversation wasn't likely to get him anywhere but he had to try it anyway. "You Transporters can just walk away this once, and..."

Himiko turned on him, looking like she was ready to explode even without swallowing any more of her flame perfume. Ban-chan grinned, but he took a step back from her just the same.

"Tsuzuki," the other boy said softly, ignoring the exchange between the two apparent long-time rivals while the others looked on with bemused interest. Ryou looked over to see him stare at the file in Jackal's hand, and then turn back to his partner. "Those papers..."

Tsuzuki, the man in the trench coat, followed his gaze, and his eyes narrowed, then widened. A strange expression came over his face, as if he suddenly felt ill.

Ryou realized with a cold shock that his face was familiar for another reason, besides seeing them earlier. He was hardly recognizable as the same laughing, childish man he'd seen outside the shops, but the blank eyes and slack mouth as he stared at the papers in Jackal's hand were the same as those of the bandaged man in the old pictures. He gazed up at that face with a twinge of horror, and a pang of sympathy as sharp as one of Dr. Jackal's knives, as he saw the man's look of recognition - of remembering.

At the same time, hope sprung to life in Ryou's heart, mingled with horror: the man who had lived so long, so impossibly, and died so tragically, was still alive after all, after all these years. _That must be the reason Satomi kept that file - he knew the man was still alive!_ he thought. The bitter mingling of hope and dread grew deeper at the implication of that.

"Bakura," he whispered, choking a little on something that caught in his throat. "That man..."

Bakura gave him a puzzled glance, then followed his gaze.

"Ah," he said after a moment. "So _that's_ what he is."

It wasn't quite the reaction Ryou was expecting. "What do you mean?"

He looked at the man, at the file, wondering now if it held the answers they needed after all. But even if it did, how could he ask for it, especially when he saw the pained look fade to a blank stare suddenly, as if even the memory was too much to bear. The man's companion flinched, as if he knew exactly what his partner must be thinking.

Jackal's eyes darted from one to the other and then to the file in his hands, as if wondering about it as well. Ryou turned to Bakura, who was staring at Tsuzuki now with a hard, suspicious gaze.

"Bakura?" Ryou asked, a little alarmed at the look in those ancient blue eyes.

Bakura didn't get a chance to answer. Lady Poison had lunged toward "Ban-chan" with a snarl of frustration. He took a light leap backwards out of her reach, and Ginji tried to jump between them, waving his hands as if that would calm them down. Naturally, it had just the opposite effect. With a snarl, she pulled out another vial. Flames again, Ryou noted, as she spread a huge arc of fire all around her, aiming it not only at the GetBackers but at anyone else in the vicinity - including the two strange newcomers, Bakura, and himself.

"Look out!" Ryou yelped. He and Bakura grabbed each other and jumped away; somehow they managed not to get tangled up while trying to save each other this time. Ryou heard the roar of flames and shouts from the others. Bakura swore and fumbled with his card deck. The green-eyed boy gave another yell like a warrior's shout, but this time there was no spell to disperse the wall of flames. The dark, sheltered little park lit up like an inferno; Ryou felt the heat of it on his face.

Suddenly, though, the heat was blocked by a cool wall of ice. Bakura had cast a card, and sheltered himself and Ryou from the blast with Cold Wave. It wouldn't do the others any good against Lady Poison's frantic attack, especially since she seemed not to care if she incinerated herself along with the everyone else. But Bakura wasn't concerned with any of the others.

"That file!" he muttered loudly, and spun around toward Jackal and the wall of flame.

"Wait!" Ryou shouted. He made a grab for him but only caught his sleeve.

Then Bakura stopped short. Jackal was no longer standing there. All they saw where he'd been a moment ago was a cloud of petals fluttering in the heated breeze from Lady Poison's inferno.

_Flower petals?_ Ryou thought wonderingly. But it's the wrong time of year. Or feathers, tiny and white, drifting all around, or was it snowflakes? No, he realized finally, that was silly, it was far too warm for snow; they must be ashes from the flames. He held out his hand, and a few fell on his palm.

Not ashes after all. In fact, they really looked more like small white petals, like tiny cherry blossoms, even though that made no sense. And some of the tiny things were brown, or edged with dark lines, like - like ink, he realized. Like old handwriting. Like the sepia tinge of a faded photograph...

He looked up. Everything else had gone still and the flames had disappeared. The air was thick with tiny bits of white and brown. Each of the others had stopped to watch the paper petals fall, and one by one, each of them turned to watch as Dr. Jackal walked away. As he passed under a street lamp, they could all see that his hands were empty.

"Akabane-san," Tsuzuki said, softly and wonderingly.

Dr. Jackal raised his gloved hand but didn't look back. No one spoke again as he disappeared into the darkness beyond the park.

Then Lady Poison screamed.

"Ahhh, that - _maniac_! Why the hell did he go and destroy the file? _What about our client!_"

"_SHIT_!" Ban yelled even more loudly. "How the hell are we supposed to get paid for this job now!"

As stunned as he was, Ryou got ready to duck and run again as the Transporter and the GetBacker turned on each other, eyes blazing.

"This is all your fault, Ban Midou!" Lady Poison yelled.

"_My_ fault? How is it my fault if you choose to team up with an unpredictable maniac!"

Ryou relaxed a little. Apparently, the two of them were going to be content with a war of words, at least for the moment. He was surprised to hear Bakura chuckle softly beside him.

"As amusing as this lovers' quarrel has become," he said, with a mischievous glint in his eye, "this should make it even more interesting. It's certainly no use to us, anyway."

Ryou watched, beyond surprise or disappointment, as another rain of white filled the air. He remembered that the only papers in his hand when he'd been taken over by Lady Poison's control perfume were the old papers from seventy years past. He'd forgotten about the rest of Prof. Satomi's files that had been in the case.

In spite of all that had happened, Ryou had to stifle a laugh when Himiko and Ban saw what was fluttering in the air around them. They stared for a second, glared at each other, and then did exactly what anyone would predict by this time. Ginji joined in, leaping around like a kid under a pinata, while the other two fought over every sheet of paper like cats and dogs.

Bakura and Ryou stood watching from one side, while Hisoka and Tsuzuki stood back on the other side of the park. Hisoka plucked one of the papers out of the air, glanced at it, scowled, and tossed it back into the fray dismissively.

Across the paper-strewn battlefield, Bakura and the strange man gazed at each other, Bakura guardedly, the other with more open curiosity.

"Hisoka," he asked his companion without looking away from Bakura. "Are you certain there wasn't another part of this assignment?"

Hisoka shook his head and scowled. He looked as puzzled by the way the two men were studying each other as Ryou felt, and nearly as worried about it, although Ryou wasn't sure why. All he knew for sure was that, as much as he wanted to ask this Tsuzuki a million questions about how he'd stayed alive so long and how he was still alive, he'd never be able to. He felt a chill in his soul that he couldn't explain when he looked at the man, but something else in his heart would have prevented him even without that warning.

Tsuzuki's eyes glinted, like amethysts catching the light, Ryou realized, as he studied Bakura with concern - or sympathy, Ryou thought, with another pang of emotion he didn't understand. Bakura, however, drew closer to Ryou, and he felt the ripple of Shadow Magic awaken. The Ring's power gleamed softly from its hidden place on the cord around his neck. Ryou braced himself, reluctantly, hoping another battle was not about to follow. He wasn't sure whether Bakura was calling on the power of to attack or defend this time - or for some other reason entirely.

"If you intend to try to escort me to the Afterlife now, after 5000 years," Bakura said, "I'm afraid you're a little late! I have no intention of paying a visit to the realm of Anubis any time soon, at any rate, so I would advise you not to bother!"

Hisoka gasped, and his large, green eyes grew even larger as he studied Bakura much more intensely than before. Tsuzuki only seemed mildly surprised. He shrugged his shoulders, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his long coat.

"Well, I guess that wasn't part of our assignment," he said, smiling. "So there's not really anything we can do about it,anyway!"

Hisoka glared at Bakura with a look of determination. "But he's - Tsuzuki, we can't just walk away from this!"

Tsuzuki cut him off with a wave of his hand and a grin. "It's not up to us to do anything, Hisoka, if we haven't been ordered to! Anyway, we don't have any jurisdiction over an Egyptian soul. That's a long way out of our sector!"

He laughed and casually ran a hand through his hair, while his partner stared at him, bristling indignantly. There was nothing in the older man's face now of the memory of despair that Ryou had seen there seconds ago; that had faded away like Dr. Jackal melting into the shadows. Only the smallest hint of it remained, he thought, in the kindness that showed in smiling, amethyst-shaded eyes.

Ryou felt baffled, and more than a little worried. He had no idea why Bakura was talking about Anubis and his ancient life, but he remembered the sense of strong magical energy he'd felt when these two had first arrived. It occurred to him, with a choking wave of awe, that the man before him was neither still alive nor alive again, as he'd thought, and neither was his companion. But what exactly that meant, he wasn't sure. He was almost certain he'd rather not know.

"Well, I think this is it, then," Tsuzuki said with a dismissive shrug, and earned an even more puzzled glare from Hisoka when he turned away from the whole mess. He gazed out at the city lights beyond the park. "It's not too late yet, though - plenty of time for dessert, as long as we're here!"

"_What_!" Hisoka screeched, like a teakettle that had suddenly reached its boiling point. "Dessert? Are you kidding! How can you think about dessert now!"

Tsuzuki looked at him innocently, as if that was the single most ridiculous question in the world.

"But, Hisoka, we never got to finish dinner, because you sensed that battle going on between Akabane-san and these two, so we should definitely..."

"_Tsuzuki_!" Hisoka wailed, throwing up his hands.

But Tsuzuki was already walking away, happily (and with practiced ease, Ryou guessed) ignoring his partner's rant while he ticked off dessert possibilities on his fingers.

Bakura watched them go with the most what-the-fuck expression Ryou had ever seen on his face. He was about to ask, reluctantly, what that was all about, when Bakura suddenly turned away and laughed.

"Huh," Bakura said, grinning to himself at some private joke. "Maybe the gods really have gone crazy."

Ryou closed his mouth on the question he hadn't wanted to ask anyway, and officially gave up on trying to understand anything. He and Bakura watched the remaining three for a minute; they were still fighting tooth and nail over the remains of Prof. Satomi's files, and a lot of paper was getting ripped up in the process. Personally, Ryou decided he would be perfectly happy if he never saw any of them again.

"You know," Bakura said thoughtfully, "Dessert doesn't sound like such a bad idea. As long as we're here. And," he added, catching Ryou's eye with the glint of suggestion in his own, "a nice hotel room. With a private bath. And a very big bed. Hm?"

Unable to figure out anything else about anything for the moment, Ryou had to admit that that, at least, made perfect sense.

_End of Part One! The All Possible Worlds series continued in "Interlude in Shinjuku," to be followed by Part Two: "In Which A Thief's Heart is Stolen" (a flashback crossover with Cardcaptor Sakura). Soon, I hope - at least way, way sooner than this followed "Anything's Possible!"_

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_A_N: Just in case anyone wonders, I have no idea who hired the Transporters to retrieve Satomi's files - Muraki, the Brain Trust, or someone else entirely! If I ever figure it out, maybe there'll be another story about it someday. I also don't know why Akabane owed Tsuzuki a favor, but they insisted they have some kind of history so I didn't argue with them, and maybe they'll tell me the rest of that story someday, too. I'm not sure about Hisoka using fuda in chapter 4, but it seemed like a nice idea so I went with it. I'm also not 100 certain about the way Himiko's poisons work, so I hope I didn't mess that part up. Sorry for any and all canon-errors and ooc moments that occur during this fic - I try to keep 'em in line, but you know how characters are sometimes...\

I wrote the first draft of this thing during the first two weeks of NaNoWriMo 2007, after a year-long case of writer's block, which is probably why the first few chapters ramble around a bit before I really got into the action and heart of the story. It took a little while to get back into Bakura's and Ryou's heads the way I used to be, so they still seem a bit off at the beginning, I think.

This story and the "All Possible Worlds" series take place in the same fanon-reality as "The Golden Dance" and "Anything's Possible." I only figured that out after I started writing them, so things aren't exactly consistent through all the stories in every detail, but they're all part of the same continuity - one that begins to diverge from Yugioh canon after Bakura loses the duel to Yami no Malik, as referred to in this story. The events in these stories replace the Noah arc, the Doom arc and the Grand Prix arc of Yugioh.

As always, reviews and comments are much loved and appreciated! (It hasn't gone out of style to review, you know!!) And thanks as always to all the B/R fans who've commented on my stories and inspired me with fanfic and fanart all along, because you all keep me going, more than you know!


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